Reverse Roll Quarter Sawing

[nativewolf]

@dougtrr2
I think the point of gun barreling (making an octagon), is not necessarily to make it a particular shape, but rather to make the log turn or roll such that the pith will always be the  same distance from the outside.  It makes sure the boards you cut are not tapered.  It makes the log symmetric from one end to the other.  It doesn't matter if the pith is offset either, just so long as it's offset the same on both ends.  This will mean when you are cutting boards, they will be a consistent width from one end to the other.  In order to achieve this though, you're not just making an octagon, but when you go to cut each face of the octagon, your pith must be the same distance to that cut face on each end of the log.  I actually measure the distance of the center of the pith to the mill bed and make sure it's the same on each end and then cut that face.  Cut the face such it's as high as possible while still giving you flat face.  I've seen some on here even have some wane on the face just so long as there's enough cut fact to register on the mill to keep the log section rolling evenly or clamped evenly so that the boards you cut off are consistent width from end to end.  I hope this makes sense?

As Yellowhammer said, you can RRQS a square cant, but you do lose some width(probably 1"-3"  on the boards at the center of a square face).  The octagon shape helps maximize the width of your boards.  A true round log would be ideal, but we  have no way to make a round log that is has the pith located at the same place on both ends unless you had a giant lathe that could use the pith as centers, which would not be practical.

@brad_bb  Go check out the turbosaw radial master.  Lathe for a sawmill, awesome.

[YellowHammer]

@Brad_bb is exactly correct, the reason for gun barreling, with any number of facetsis to get all the facets level with the pith, from any rotational angle, to establish reference facets and corners.  Especially since one of the faces will be split down the middle and later be used as a reference.  So getting the pith aligned properly in the beginning is key to any quarter sawing technique.  While doing that, the larger you can maintain the diameter of the log, the wider the boards will be.  

Then, in order to first learn the log, I'll take, generally 3 centerboards on a smallish log, more on a bigger one, @Mossy Chariot and from them I will start to learn how forgiving the log is going to be.  For example, if I don't get any fleck on the top of the first centerboard, thats a bad sign.  If I don't get center fleck on the middle centerboard, the dead center board, than that means I need to make adjustments to the log half with the toe boards to drive the fleck to where I want it.  Little adjustments of the log will allow the Sawyer to actually move the fleck up and down the log, as well as side to side.  Its best to practice this on a low value log, but it teaches how to move the fleck up and down the board face by tweaking the angle and rotation.  It's all about being in control of the log and fleck, not the log being in control of the Sawyer.  

For an experiment, set up a poor quality log half, and raise the rear toeboard a little and watch the fleck get stronger or weaker, then drop that toeboard, and raise the other toeboard and drive the fleck until it disappears in the other direction.  These experimental cuts are just skims, so as not to get too far off the pith.  

Danny, every time I think of the project, I smile.  I still remember the very first time we demonstrated this several years ago at one of the earlier Projects, there was a "little" nervousness about slicing and dicing a high value log with this new technique and butchering the log.  One of the guys even came up to me beforehand and whispered, "Are you sure you want to do this in front of a crowd?  I tried it once and it didn't work out so well."  I said sure "It'll be OK."  So about the second or third board, Jake, who saws a couple million bdft a year looked at me and said "I got this" and started slicing and dicing boards off, one after another like he'd been doing forever.  After the demo and few logs later, another person came up and said something like "Sure, you guys made it look easy, you've been doing it for awhile." and I responded "No, this is a new technique, and that's Customsawyer's and Danny's first or second time doing it, they are that good and its that easy."  The guy could hardly believe it.  Of course, that was the key for me, I had @WDH Danny and Jake @customsawyer in the ball game, and with their experience and knowledge, they couldn't butcher a log if they tried.

[Brad_bb]

Sure it's "that easy" ...when you have a turner and hyd toe boards.  Haha, a bit harder on a manual mill.  Boy I need to add some hydraulics to my mill!  

[customsawyer]

It's part of being on the forum. Danny and I actually learned the octagon technique on here. I think it was Arkansawyer and Bibbyman that were working with it to start with. Then I got a 35" white oak log and talked Danny into coming over and we gave it a try. We worked with it on several different logs over the next year or so and some how in all the post on the forum and talking with friends the project came to be. Yellowhammer comes to his first project and puts his twist on it and the rest is history. The log in the video was one where you didn't have to chase the fleck. If you get one where the rays disappear in just a board or two then you have to work with the log from side to side or end to end to keep high fleck in every board.

[YellowHammer]

The power of the Forum.  

[WDH]

When Robert (Yellowhammer) first came, I told him, "Watch this. Jake will reverse roll the log on the mill with the chain turner onto a facet that sets up the growth rings in the right orientation to the blade.  Robert had a Lt40 with the claw, and you cannot reverse roll a cant with the claw like you can with the chain turner with precision.  

Well, being a thinking man, Robert left thinking how can I reverse roll on the LT40 with the claw and two-plane clamp, and figured out how to do that.  It also improved the octagon method, even with the chain turner, improving the % of full fleck boards from the high 80's to near 100%.  

When it comes to this milling and drying stuff, Robert sits under a tree in North Alabama and a crab apple falls on his head and really good stuff happens  :P.  

[YellowHammer]

It all comes down to "Take Steps to Save Steps."

Going from 4 quarters to 2 halves, and now I'd like to do it as one log.  

I'm playing with an optical sight for the rear end of the log using a vehicle backup camera and display, so I can align the center of the pith without using a tape measure or moving from the head of the mill.  That's the slowest part now, the pith leveling with a tape measure.  I could save lots of steps if I got this working.

Has anyone seen one in the market? You'd think there would be something out there for this but I haven't found it.    

[doc henderson]

I thought there should be a remote camera that you set up near a target, say at a hundred yards, then look at teat via your phone.  even a spotting scope does not do it for me.  Lots of back up cameras.  got one at WM to put on the skid steer.  and on on the camper, wireless from the back of camper to a screen inside the truck.  mount at the end of the mill, or on the head.  you can move the blade up and down to get a measurement for the front.  or get a drone... not practical but fun!   ;) :D

[doc henderson]

I use a laser to put a line in front of the blade, so I know when I am past the log, especially on the return so I can hit the drop button.  that would be cool, if it could hit both ends of a log.  laser at one and and a mirror at the other.  would have to be bright and aligned precise.  also not practical.  maybe under a shed?

[alan gage]

Regarding raising one end of the log or the other to chase fleck and some logs being more forgiving than others:

As I understand it the rays, which give the quarter sawn figure, are thin ribbons that run from the outside of the tree to the pith and theoretically, once the pith is leveled, they should be leveled too. So in a perfect world if your blade entered the log parallel to a ray it should exit parallel to the same ray and you'd have good fleck all the way down and across the board. But since nothing in life is perfect the rays tend to wander, similar to a wandering pith, which can give you good figure on one end/edge of board but not at the other. So by raising or lowering one end of the log your trying to line up wandering rays as best as possible.

Do I have the jist of that right?

Alan

[terrifictimbersllc]

It all comes down to "Take Steps to Save Steps."

Going from 4 quarters to 2 halves, and now I'd like to do it as one log.  

I'm playing with an optical sight for the rear end of the log using a vehicle backup camera and display, so I can align the center of the pith without using a tape measure or moving from the head of the mill.  That's the slowest part now, the pith leveling with a tape measure.  I could save lots of steps if I got this working.

Has anyone seen one in the market? You'd think there would be something out there for this but I haven't found it.    

I thought you found it at the Georgia project having Danny at the other end. :D

[YellowHammer]

@alan gage 
Yes, that is correct, but it's more than correct, its crucial to this technique and what separates it from more conventional QSawing techniques.  

In order to get good fleck, the log half must be aligned with the pith axially, and at the correct angle rotationally, and generally set up in the beginning with a tape measure before the first cut is ever made.  All this works great if its a straight log, but if the log isn't then the fleck may show up only at one end, or the other, or on the outside of the boards, or more to the inside.  This can really be a problem, especially if the fleck shows up in a problem area, or the same area as a defect such as a knot or split but fades out in the clear, high grade part of the board.  Using conventional qs techniques, once the pith is leveled and the quarters are sawn, you are pretty much committed that the fleck is going to show up where it shows up and that's it.  Or not show up at all.  That's what was so incredibly frustrating for me, spending all the time gun barreling, slicing the log into quarters, and ending up with quarter sawn wood but with no fleck.  Some logs I'd be down in the 75% hit range, and since I was paying extra for very high quality logs to quartersaw, this was intolerable and costing me money, big time.  Plus it was so slow, i.e. cut a log in half, then cut the first half into quarters, then the other half into quarters, then mount one quarter and start sawing it just to get misses, knowing I had 3 more quarters to go.  So I would end up with two pallets of wood, side by side, one with fleck, the other with none, and as the boards got put on the "no fleck" pallet, my irritation would rise substantially.  I actually stopped qsawing and selling quarter sawn wood for some time, it seemed much too haphazard and high labor, with too unpredictable results.

So the main advantage of technique, besides being much faster because it doesn't involve cutting halves into quarters, or whether you reverse roll or forward roll, it allows you to take little prospecting wedge cuts on the smallest part of the log half and find the fleck and then adjust the log half, if necessary to drive the fleck to exactly where you want it.  Then if the grain is stable, no more adjustments are required, but if the log has a spiral grain or taper, or crook, it allows you to take little skim cuts off the wedges and get the fleck exactly where you want it again and then start taking wider and wider boards that you'll know have fleck vs hope it has fleck.  This readjustment can be done as many times as required to stay in the fleck.  So the sawing frustration disappears and the log can be sawn without any magic required.  I think at the Project, on the very first log we did the demo on, we had to make a couple wedge adjustments, because we had a miss on one board.  That's not bad, saw up a log and only have one miss.  These days, I generally don't get misses, I just may get a board that doesn't have as much fleck as others, but it still has fleck  

The log I did in the video was a very straight and predictable oak log.  I did the demo on it because I kept getting the feeling that I was confusing people describing the intricacies of the RRQS rather than showing the basic technique.  Speaking of magic, I believe it was Magicman who tried it and likened it to "Freestyle Sawing" and I loved that description.  Thats exactly what it is: do whatever you need, hold the logs half however you can, make adjustments using whatever mill you have, rotate forward, backward or whatever, to "get the fleck."  Some of the earlier posts I show me clamping and sawing boards and the cant isn't even touching the bed or the toeboards, I have it pinned against the backstops in the angle and orientation I want, and its floating off the bed.  For whatever reason on those cuts, even though the pith was initially leveled it wasn't producing the best flack and I was making on the fly, real time adjustments.  

On my LT40, due to the threat capacity and the way the log clamp and claw turner work, reverse rolling allowed me more holding options and let me generally cut wider boards because of the throat width and a lack of clearance on the idle side.  With the LT70 Wide, I have clearance in any direction.  

[WDH]

Dennis,

Have tape measure, will travel.

[Andries]

Better watch it Dennis.
He's starting to sound like Palladin!

[jtmccallum]

I had a large red oak die this summer.  I cut it down last week and the butt log looks like an ideal candidate for rrqs.  It is about 40" in diameter with a check where I would cut the log in half anyway. I have a friend who has a chainsaw mill and will be sawing slabs out of the 2nd log.  I plan to cut this log in half with the chainsaw mill to get it to fit on my LT40SUPER and then slab it parallel to the pith. Not as easy as cutting a whole log into an octagon I know but I would like to get as wide  qsawn boards as possible. I have large white oaks I will be taking out as well.

[sumpnz]

Besides oak and sycamore what species really benefit from QS in terms of figure?  I know folks will QS a lot of wood species in order to get the straight grain and stability from that, but do other woods show the medulary rays or other interesting figure when QS?

[Magicman]

Beech.

[jtmccallum]

Does anyone know how quartersawn beech behaves during drying. 

[trimguy]

Does anyone have a picture of quarter sawn beech ?

[DWyatt]

Does anyone know how quartersawn beech behaves during drying.

In my experience, Beech never behaves. It does have beautiful QS figure, similar to sycamore but not as extreme.

[jtmccallum]

This is the log. I think I can take 2 boards out of the center with the chainsaw mill then finish it on my mill. My friend with the chainsaw mill came down with Covid after we picked out several trees for slabbing. I will saw what I can in the meantime. It is about 10' 8" long. @



 

 

[YellowHammer]

Thats a nice one.  That looks different than the southern beech I'm accustomed to.  Most of ours are hollow, anyway.

[jtmccallum]

Sorry Yellowhammer. This is a red oak I talked about in a earlier post. It took me awhile to figure out how to post a photo. 

[nativewolf]

RO?  

[customsawyer]

That looks closer to some of our white oak down here.