The next day I decided there had to be a way to make it work. They had been cutting frozen maple half slabs for 150 years at Two Rivers, and Hamilton had produced millions of pieces of wood type from the properly dried and prepared maple.
I called my friend at the Columbus Saw & Tool Company and he recommended a special 1 inch bi-metal industrial band saw blade that could be used to cut nonferrous metals and very hard woods. It was three times as expensive (under $100) but he was sure it would keep it’s “Set” and cut the frozen maple.
I also gave up on using my carriage saw to feed the half logs past the blade. I tore it apart and returned the borrowed straight casters. I also got rid of the fence. The problem now was how to get exactly 1 1/4” half slabs with no fence. The half logs were perfectly flat on the bottom. The sawmill had ripped the 8 foot logs in half for me, and they were also frosty with ice from the frozen maple. They would slide very easily on a saw table.
I decided to use a 12” radial arm saw to solve two problems. First, by raising up the arm of the saw a new carbide crosscut blade would cut the first 3 inches of the frozen bark side. That saved a little work for the bandsaw.
Second, by using a homemade indexing pin (a bent piece of wire attached to the guard) I could cut very accurate slots 1 1/4 inches apart, leaving an 1/8 inch groove (kerf). It was a little scary at first, and the frozen maple sawdust filled the air and floor around the radial arm saw like snow.
Back to the bandsaw.
Cutting 9 inch thick wood on a bandsaw still follows the regular shop safety rules. The guides and guards were set to just above the top of the bark, and hand position was very important. I also kept several thick pieces of wood nearby to safely finish each cut. I am very good on a bandsaw and had no problem keeping the new blade centered in the radial arm saw slot. The bi-metal blade cut the remaining 6 inches of frozen maple like butter. Smooth and straight. I got 11 half slabs out of the first log then stopped to check the blade. It looked brand new, Thank you Columbus Saw.
I had help from a good friend who removed the cut slabs. After I taught Bill to “stick” the wood, he loaded my new drying cart as fast I could cut. 208 beautiful frozen half maple slabs, 14 to 16 inches long, filled the cart to almost 5 feet tall. The fresh cut frozen maple looked like slabs of new creamery butter, a beautiful, light, rich, cream. None of my pictures do it justice. Half of my log supply was cut, and the other half would remain outside under a tarp while I was gone for the weekend. (continued)
I had everything ready to cut half maple slabs. The industrial 4 tooth bandsaw blade was set to the correct tension, the fence was 1 1/4” from a right side pointing tooth The real woodworkers will understand what I mean, the rest of you need to understand that the teeth on a bandsaw blade are slightly bent left-right-left-right and leave a kerf, or width of cut. This is called “Set” and the factory alternates all 600 teeth.
I hoisted a frozen maple half log onto my home-made carriage saw. Safety glasses of course, I’m an Industrial Arts teacher. The first cut was wonderful. Straight through the log, and I could feed it at a slow but steady rate. It was kind of like working outside in the snow, the white sawdust coming off the log was still frozen and very cold. Yea! It was going to work. One cut down, only 400 more to go.
The second cut was almost the same, just a little harder to keep the cut straight and the cut end against the fence. The third cut wandered all over the place. When you are hand feeding a nine inch thick half-log past a big moving blade, I started to wonder what was going on. I shut everything down and decided to figure it out before I wasted any more wood or hurt myself.
From 35 years of woodworking, I know how to troubleshoot a problem. I started with the carriage saw, it worked smooth and ran straight. I rechecked the fence for square and a 1 1/4” cut. Not there either. That left the blade. It was still very sharp, and the tension was still correct. Then I saw the problem. There was no set left in the saw teeth. The teeth were in a perfectly straight line, no more left-right-left-right. The frozen maple had straightened out the blade after only 3 cuts. I was very sad. I cleaned-up the shop and went home to figure out what to do. I had a huge pile of frozen maple logs outside under a tarp and 60 degree weather coming in 5 days.
One cold day in January I had a meeting with Randy Smith, owner of Timbertree Farm in Baltimore, Ohio. His sawmill was only four miles from my school and he was willing to meet all my requirements for a fair price. He would provide four, eight foot hard maple logs from his family’s wood lot near Athens, Ohio. The logs had to be frozen (like all the reference books and the displays at Hamilton stressed) with the “Sap down”, 14″ to 16″ in diameter, and the bark still on the logs. My experiments with green (wet) walnut and cherry log slices during the summer showed me the bark helps to control the drying process and that it was possible to dry 1/2 slabs without cracks and checking. Of that walnut and cherry, I ended up with 20 good slabs of each for future “special order” wood type.
It was five weeks later when I received an e-mail that my logs were cut and already ripped into eight half logs. I had begun to worry because the weatherman called for period of warm, sunny days in only a week. There was still snow on the ground, and when I took my trailer and old van out to the sawmill, it was almost a postcard picture of my beautiful logs covered with snow.
Randy estimated the eight half-logs weighed about 2,000 pounds frozen. They were from two trees from the hard maple area of his farm. He moved the logs with his tractor lift, and we used a chain saw to cut the logs into 32 inch lengths. Some sections went into my van, and some went into the small trailer. Three trips later I had a very nice stack of maple outside my shop. I tarped the stack to help keep it frozen and marked it as “Maple for Type, NOT FIREWOOD!”
The weather was below freezing so I knew I had until the weekend to get everything ready for the slabbing process. I had already purchased a one inch wide, four tooth, high speed steel industrial bandsaw blade for our largest bandsaw from a sawblade manufacturing company in Columbus. I built a carriage of upside down straight casters and a strong work table that moved at the bandsaw table height and attached our largest portable dust system.
An oak slab and jointer provided a fence set for 1 1/4 inch. During my waiting time, I had used salvaged square box steel and industrial casters to weld-up two, five foot long drying carts. I was ready to cut 1 1/4″ half maple slabs, just like they did in the 1800’s…maybe.
(continued)
