Pride comes before the fall

[Bibbyman]

Mary has been doing most of the sawing on the new Wood-Mizer with the Command Control that includes Accuset Setworks.  Last weekend I got to getting some serious time in the "Captain's" chair.  First it was real clumsy having to un-remember all the stuff I'd committed to memory after using mills without setwroks for eight years.  But I finally smoothed out to a rhythm and started to pick up speed.  By the fourth day I was getting pretty good at running it.

We were sawing 3x4 oak blocking and making 1" barn lumber off the sides.  It was a good way to use up some of our old rough logs.  I had one large tight bark (pignut?, mock nut?) hickory log that I dreaded to get into.  It was better than 20" on the little end and had some curve.  I just knew it was going to give me fits.   But I was pleasantly surprised when I cut the first slab off and it lie flat on the log and didn't peel off like a corn chip.

By the time I had it squared down I wish I had sawn it into grade lumber.  It was sawing as nice as you could expect any log.  I was using just a little plain water on the blade - nothing exotic.   The blade wasn't right out of the box having sawn three old oak logs ahead of this one.

I ripped it the 3" way and then turned the cants up and clamped it.  They were so true you would have had a problem getting a credit card pushed into the saw cuts.  I started ripping it down the 4" way and was so pleased as to how many nice pieces I was going to make out of this one log and how true they turned out.

Then the fall:  I got the last cut made and shut down the mill to pull the product off.  Soon as I stepped around from behind the console,  I saw my error.   Sometime when I made my last turn I had somehow fumbled around and pulled the back toe board control lever and raised it about an inch.  My top four pieces turned out to be 3x4 on one end and 3x5 on the other.  The bottom four were 3x4 on one end and 3x3 on the other.  The middle was fine of course.  I could resaw the top batch and save them but the bottom four were thrown out for our use.

Life's little way of tell me I'm not perfect. >:(

[Jeff]

Bib, it is possible to achieve perfection and never worry about those miscuts. I credit mine to the big Morbark chipper standing at the end of the green chain.

[Kevin]

That`s enough to frost your tropicals.
I`d run them through a planer or resaw and salvage what I could, I hate wasting wood.