Reverse Roll Quarter Sawing

[SawyerTed]

Another Yellowhammerism, "If you don't have a drag back, you are suffering."  

Sometimes you don't know you are suffering until you do! :D :D  My wife is only luke warm about the sawmill upgrade.  She will be convinced when she catches lumber and slabs off the drag back.

There's so much to learn in your videos.  Some is obvious and some not so.  Like the gray drag back table and the roller skate conveyor are not the subject of the video but are definitely worth noting.

[WDH]

I cannot imagine sawing alone without drag back.  This child don't like suffering.  

[scsmith42]

Great vid Robert; thanks as always for sharing your techniques and knowledge.

Regarding the triangular shaped discards from the QS process, we make a pass on the sharp part about an inch down and then sell them for 2" thick dunnage to folks that are picking up lumber on a trailer and did not bring anything to put under it.  Usually we get $5 per 48" length.  

Have your figured out a profitable use for them?

Scott



 

[YellowHammer]

No, I don't use them for anything, I've tried and their randomness makes them difficult to find a use for.  Dunnage is a good idea, but I just don't do that much with them.  I do have customers who come by and pay $20 for them for firewood.  

@SawyerTed 

You are correct, I've done lots of little things that make sawing easier and faster for a one man band like myself.  Everything from drilling a 2 inch hole in my water lube tank to putting a manual valve on my Lubemizer line.  The tables are certainly also a part of it, and a non roller, flat top table is sometimes more useful than a roller table.  For example, roller tables have a tendency to orient and feed boards in a perpendicular direction on the roller, whereas flat top tables allow sliding.  So that's why a straight line rip saw, SLR, should never use a roller table as an infeed or outfeed, because the rollers of the roller table can pull a board and fight the SLR, where a flat top table doesn't put any influence on the boards and so doesn't effect or influence the straightness of the feed of the SLR.  This same principal can be applied for use on the mill, I use flat top tables where I want the mill to control the direction of the board movement, and roller tables where I want the rollers to control it.  Flat top tables where I want to control the distance of travel due to,friction, and roller tables where I want gravity to take over, such as the perpendicular outfeed roller table, which I have purposefully bent the last roller to cause it to drag and act as a brake.  That's why tossed the wedge piece instead of putting it one the table.  Plus I was mad that I actually had to stop and unload it by hand.  

I have a beautiful WM roller outfeed table for my sawmill, but I don't use it for these reasons.  It spent years out rusting in the woods until I found a use for it with my Baker edger.  It is very useless on a sawmill.  A flat top steel or wood, with a single roller at the end is much more useful.  Also, the dragback shoes are crucial, because not only does it let me carry and drop boards where I want, I can pull them back and stack in 3 dimensions, side by side as on the video, or on top of each other.  If I pull them back far enough, I can do the B Train style of double feeding as in the video, but if I don't pull them back as far, and drop them early, then I can stack boards on top of the previous stack.  That's why at the 9 min mark I stopped to hand pull the boards back a foot or so, they were in position for a top stack of the next pack to be fed as opposed to the rear push.  So just pulling them by hand a foot of so changed the way I could stack them with the drag back.  If the pack I pulled was flat boards, with no wedge on top, I would have left them where they were and pulled the other boards back on top of them to make a taller pack that I could B train on the next run.  This would be a good subject for a video. 

It's a fact, for an operation like mine, "if you don't have a dragback, you ARE suffering." 

I like that as a Yellowhammerism.  Short and sweet.  I need to make a list somewhere.

 

[wkf94025]

Any adaptations of RRQS to swing arm?  Curious what other swing arm operators think when they watch @YellowHammer video.  I have a fair bit of white oak and red oak to slay this year.  Love the results in the photos here by YH and others.

[Magicman]

Thank You Robert.  

I will start a total QS White Oak/Red Oak job Saturday so I have done some reviewing and re-watching.  This is a several times repeat customer and as usual, he wants nothing but QS.

[YellowHammer]

This will work fine, and goes pretty fast, except for the gunbarreling which is aggravating but common to all QS techniques.  

With the jelly roll, I simplified the rotations to just landing on the facets, and that works 90% to 95% percent of the time, but if the customer wants 100% fleck, them I sometimes rotate not exactly to the facets but where ever the rotation gives the best fleck.  Basically rotate to where I just barely see fleck, and them saw boards until it just disappears on one face and rotate again.  Most of the time, though, that lines up with the facets anyway.  The log will tell you.  On this log, the facet rotations were perfect and so well aligned I didn't even have to look at the boards as I was sawing, I just knew they were right and pulled them back.  When we do this at Jake's project, he pulls them back one at a time and we check them as they slide by.       

One thing I've been doing lately to speed up the measuring to the bed process is I put a couple "sliders" or pieces of movable 1/8" x 1" steel x 18" or even a couple pieces of narrow boards, like the metal leg of a framing square, on each side of the bed frame where the log ends land and use that as a quick reference to measure from the mill bed frame instead of the bed rails, because sometime the bead rails are covered or hard to measure from.  I just leave them there log to log, day to day, even, they don't get in the way, and that solves the problem of trying to measure from the end of a log to the bed so I always have a flat place to measure from.  

I rewatched the video and you can see a small narrow wooden board about an inch or two wide, under the bed rollers, 1 min 8 seconds in the video, where I was measuring from the bed frame.  I have them on each side.    

[Magicman]

I rewatched the video and you can see a small narrow wooden board about an inch or two wide, under the bed rollers, 1 min 8 seconds in the video, where I was measuring from the bed frame. I have them on each side.

I like that.

While scrolling through this topic I found where I QS'd for this customer on page 9, Reply #175.  Your response is where the expression; "freestyle" originated.  

[YellowHammer]

Yes, I remember that clearly; the fact that you had done it, and described it perfectly in that one word was groundbreaking to me as it gave the technique legitimacy, and also explained that it wasn't a paint by numbers technique, but still required awareness of overall sawing technique, if not also the method.

The Jellyroll technique was a years' later offshoot of the "freestyle" comment, because as I taught the technique, I encountered people who needed closer guidance, generally because they just hadn't done it before and needed a little boost to success, or they had mills with limited or no hydraulics, so needed more secure clamping.  So I needed to simplify the technique and before too long, I started shifting over to this technique as a "turn and burn" method that wasn't quite as accurate or high yield as the original RRQS method but could be done more easily and much faster.

It just so happens that day I decided to film the whole process, and although I hadn't watched the video for quite some time, as I watched it today I said "Yep, that's how to do it."

[Magicman]

All of the above is why I dug out the QS topic and started reviewing this morning.  I very seldom saw for woodworkers, etc.

I am actually looking forward to Saturday and breaking away from my normal "framing lumber" cut lists. 

[Larry]

On a custom sawing job without an edger their will be lot more boards to edge than normal on the mill.  I suppose if the customer agrees to an hourly rate it will work out ok.

[Magicman]

This will be a hourly rate job but most of the edging will be done by the customer on his table saw.

I have sawed for him several times so there are no surprises.

[Larry]

If he lets it dry, than uses a ripping sled on the table saw that's fairly efficient.  Its gonna crook as it dries anyhow.

 

[YellowHammer]

I agree, I don't even edge them green on the mill or edger, until they are dried.  One of the advantages of QS lumber is that the stress is in the crook direction so keeps the board flat but most all will be straigehting later, whether edged off the mill or not.  So I just do it once after the wood is dry.  

I like the QS process, but still get aggravated with the tediousness of the gun barreling.  Once I get to the QS prices, it's like I'm almost done. Sometimes if the log looks very cylindrical, I'll just skip make it the facets and just use the QS process based on the bark, but sometimes that doesn't work.  

[WDH]

I learned to edge after drying too or you will do it twice  .  

[scsmith42]

Personally, i make the edging call based upon the amount of sapwood or juvenile wood cells.  Too wide a band of either along the edge and I'll run the board though the edger while still green.  I do this in order to reduce crook during the drying process.

My goal is not to remove all of the pith/sapwood  (it's best to leave some for future edging), rather I just want to remove enough to keep the boards from crooking.  Ideally I want less than 1" of sapwood in order to prevent crook.

After gun-barreling, only a few boards may need to make the trip through the edger green for the above stated purpose.

[Magicman]

I had a very successful  Jelly Rolling day

[Brad_bb]

Boy I wish there was a sawyer list of those who do RRQS or Jelly Roll Sawing.  My manual mill is just so much work doing it, plus I cannot cut wide enough for the middle thru cuts.

[Larry]

  The top half "Jelly Rolled" off and then 4 slices taken from the center.

I snatched a picture from MM's post, think you have to click to open it.

I have a question.  In the picture MM sawed 4 slices from the center which is common practice for any quarter sawing method. 

Those four slices can be boards up to 28" wide on my mill.  They are really heavy to sticker and almost always the juvenile wood in the center ends up waste.

I often take the top third off and slide it on the arms just as MM shows in his picture.  But than I go in a different direction.  I flip the remainder on the mill and take off another third and slide it to the loading arms so I have two jellyrolls waiting.  Next I saw those four slices to the bed.  Than I stand up the four boards with the two plane clamp and take out the center juvenile wood.  So...I end up with 8 quarter sawn boards that don't crook much.  Plus they are a lot lighter to handle (good for us old guys ).

Does anybody else do anything similar?  Maybe I making extra work for myself doing it this way.

 

[Magicman]

 

 Many of those 20"- 24" center boards are shown here.  The customer plans to use the top and bottom boards to maybe make sorta bookmatched 40"+ tabletops.  Anyway without edging the piths out, the ball is in his court to do as he wishes with them.  If the pith splits out while drying, he can deal with it then.

[WDH]

In oak, there is a 100% probability that the pith will split. 

[Magicman]

I agree but I just saws um and ......... 

[YellowHammer]

Larry, I think I'm following, you are cutting out the center boards then are putting them back up on the mill and cutting the pith out first, then sawing the Jellys?  Sure, that sounds like it works well, and anything to make sawing easier is good!  

I either sticker the full width boards and run them through the edger later (you are right, they are pretty heavy) or I go the lazy way, and I will simply flip the whole mess onto the loader arms, log half and center cut boards at the same time, and when I'm ready, I flip up the loader arms and see which part of the mess wants to load back up to the deck the first and easiest, and just juggle them with the chain turner, two plane and and loader arms and separate them and process the pieces that want to be processed, and drop the remainder back down on the arms.  That way I don't really have to lift anything, I just kind of shuffle things around and cut what wants to be cut.  Most times I don't havre to hand touch anything, but sometimes I have to walk to the loader arms and do a little "sorting" and cussing, but most times it's pretty easy.  The LT70 engine driven loader arms are very fast and it's not quite like flipping an omelet in a frying pan, but that's kind off what I'm trying to do.  

[WDH]

Robert, I don't think your understanding is correct.  My understanding is that Larry starts by sawing the top third cant off the log, then flips the remaining two thirds that is left 180 degrees.  Then saws off the next third (the one on the bottom in the beginning that is now on top) leaving a center cant that includes the pith.  He saws this center cant containing the pith into those full wide boards leaving the boards in a stack on the mill bed, flips them 90°, edges out the juvenile wood, thus eliminating having to handle the wide center boards at all, turning the original 4 wide heavy boards into eight narrower lighter boards.  

[Larry]

Danny, that's exactly what I'm doing.  I also make use of the drag back with those eight.