Reverse Roll Quarter Sawing

[WDH]

That makes so much sense.  

[YellowHammer]

Oh, I get it now.  Yeah that would be a good sequence.  I'll have to try it myself!  

[jasonb]

I'll have to try it myself!

It takes steps to save steps.



I've read that somewhere before.

[YellowHammer]

 :D
I'm always learning and looking for new and better ways to do things.  

[flatrock58]

I love quarter sawn oak personally but it does not sell as well as rift sawn wood around here these days. So I just square up the big oak logs and cut them into 3 ~8" sections. The outside two I just cut from top to bottom and get rift and qs. The middle section I cut out the pith and cut all qs. 

[YellowHammer]

That's interesting, I have started selling rift white oak as well, which I never used to do.

When I talked to a wholesaler buddy of mine about a year ago about it, (yes I have a buddy :D) he said that rift sawn was more expensive and higher demand than Qsawn and he couldn't keep it in stock.  He is the owner of the second largest lumber distributer in the South United States, and isn't prone to exaggeration.  He had QS in stock but no rift sawn.  

I can understand it being used for barrel staves, and I still sell more Qsawn than rift to furniture makers, but he tells the truth and I'm still trying to figure out the market for rift sawn.

Who is using rift sawn and for what in large enough quantities to outsell and out demand Qsawn, and buying it at a significantly higher wholesale price?

At that time, QSWO was wholesale $7 and the Rift WO was $10, which is a huge difference.  

[Magicman]

Back in the 80's, I had a cabinet shop which was before portable sawmills were even invented and ~15 years before I owned one.  

I preferred flat sawn for front and top stock and rift for legs.  I had no idea what those rays were and actually tried to sand those "defects" out.  I still love to see a good cathedral pattern board.  Especially one that is sawn from either the hump or horn face of a log and the pattern runs out and then picks back up.

To me too much QS can make the piece too "busy" and can distract from some furniture's beauty.

I have one customer (that I sawed for last month) that does not want even one board that is not QS, making him 100% QS.  There are others that want maximum yield and will figure out something to do with those "squirrely" boards.


 
In February of this year I watched another customer look at this Red Oak board and send it to the burn pile.  I intended to retrieve it before I left, but forgot.

Lumber is not a "one size fit's all".

[Texas Ranger]

Around here just the opposite, quarter sawn brings higher dollars.

[KenMac]

Personally I think QS is more specialized for use in Mission or Arts and Craft styles of furniture. I really don't know if those styles are still as popular as they once were or not. Rift sawn makes perfect stiles and rails in cabinet face frames so the panels can be the attraction wood. Perfect cabinet door to me would be rift sawn stiles and rails and flat sawn cathedral grain panels. I agree with MM on this one.

[jimF]

thanks for the link Doc

[Brad_bb]

Started milling last week after a hiatus.  Need to mill everything in the yard and get things cleaned up.  Had a red and a white oak log that I had gun barreled a year and a half to two years ago.  The logs had sat in the yard for a 2- 3years before that.   The red oak log turned out to be junk now.  It was a good log when I got it, but I know better.  You have to mill red oak right away.

So I've been working on the White oak log.  It's fine other than a little sapwood rot on one end, but most of that is getting trimmed off as I trim the boards down from 11' to 10'3" for the pallet.

I have an LT15go and I've RRQS's a couple years ago on it.  RRQS'ing on a manual mill is a lot more work to do the gun barreling, and do mill the top and bottom third of the log after you take your cuts out of the middle.  This time doing it, I found it much easier to mill the thirds by orienting them this way.


The red crayon lines are for alignment.  The red line by band is aligned to in the picture shows two boards above the line I'll take first, and one board below the line.  Then I have to roll and align my band to the next red line and take two boards below the line.  Starting on the outside is the opposite of what Yellowhammer does on the reverse roll, but I've round it's easier doing it this way on the manual mill.   I use the woodmizer toothed wedge, and some wood wedges to fill the space after I roll the piece with my can't hook. In this picture you can see the wedges which are what really hold the log up.  the clamps are just there as a safety/backup.  It's much easier to rotate the log up in this orientation with the can't hook and slip the wedges in.  The other side of the log register up against two uprights.  Reverse rolling with my mill is much more difficult.


The limitation on my manual mill is the throat opening of 24", so the max distance across the flats where you take your middle cuts can't be more than 24".  I've had some bigger logs that I was able to gun barrel on my mill, but I had to take them to a guy with a wide mill to cut them up.  I was teaching him the technique as we cut.  He was happy to have learned the technique as he was about to mill a big Sycamore log and ended up using this RRQS.