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How important is max cut thickness when quartersawing?

Started by crmorse, February 16, 2020, 06:31:28 PM

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crmorse

I'm currently shopping for a small bandsaw mill to use while building my house. My exterior walls are all masonry and the interior are commercial lumber so I don't really have any need to cut dimension lumber. However, I have a lot of maple logs that I saved during clearing and storms that I plan to use for all the moulding.  I also have a lot of red oak that's blown down in storms that I am planning to use to make my own hardwood flooring. (yes, I'm aware that's a ton of work).

Here's where things get confusing for me.  Since my purposes (trim molding and floor board) don't require wide boards I don't think I need a particularly large saw.  I've gone out and scaled the timber that I have and most of my future saw logs are 15-20" with a handful that are 20-26". With that as my upper bounds on width I'm considering the Woodland Mills HM126, Norwood LM29, and Woodmizer LT15*.  They all have their advantages and are pretty similar in specs except for one dimension: MAX CUT THICKNESS. The Woodland and Norwood are both 7" while the Woodmizer is 10.5"

Since I'm planning to try and quartersaw most of the red oak for the flooring (only 4-6" wide needed) When looking at Woodmizer's "Easy Quarter Sawing" guide, I'm thinking max cut thickness would be really important.  Using their guide as a guide, it looks like 21" is about the maximum diameter I could quartersaw with only a 7" throat unless I do flip/flop on every cut approach which I don't see me sticking with the amount of BF I'll need.

So two questions to the group:
1) How important is that max cut thickness?  Or stated another way, how hard would it be to quartersaw 20" logs with only 7" of depth?

2) I love the ray fleck in red oak. I also don't mind the flat sawn look. Since this is almost exclusively for flooring would I be better off to just plan on slabbing everything and let the grain falls where it may?

terrifictimbersllc

7"  vertical max will limit some of your qs boards to a little less than that width, for logs exceeding the throat width of the mill you choose.  say_what 
DJ Hoover, Terrific Timbers LLC,  Mystic CT Woodmizer Million Board Foot Club member. 2019 LT70 Super Wide 55 Yanmar,  LogRite fetching arch, WM BMS250 sharpener/BMT250 setter.  2001 F350 7.3L PSD 6 spd manual ZF 4x4 Crew Cab Long Bed

millwright

If you want to use the method where you split the log in half to begin, you will want the one with the most capacity. 

WDH

I agree.  Maximum cut thickness is very important when quartersawing. You can also put a powerfeed on the LT15 which is better than sliced bread.
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

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