Turn Firewood into Lumber - Save Money Using Your Band Saw to make Log splits into Lumber

Transcript:

Welcome everybody to MAKE SOME DUST. Today’s project: taking a piece of wood that was destined to be firewood and let’s make a block of wood out of it that we can use on projects. So, my name is Chuck, and I’m going to take you through multiple different woodworking projects that we can do around this homestead.

Right here we’re going to be doing some planing on this block as I mentioned. We also do some firewood processing and we also do sawmill work. So I’ll be able to take projects from tree logs right down to the finished furniture pieces for you. So, follow along and hopefully you’ll like this format. i prefer doing voice over. And, while you’re watching along you’ll notice my holy sweatshirt. Don’t laugh too hard. We all got a favorite sweatshirt and this one’s mine.

So what we are watching here. I’ve already planed one surface. Make it nice and flat. Now we are putting that flat surface against that fence, and we’ll get a second surface. It being ninety degrees to the first. We do this to get it nice and flat. Nice and square to each other because your next step is your are either gonna take this board and put it to your band saw or to your table saw and make dimensional lumber out of it. In order to do that you have to do this process by squaring it up. Making it flat. You’ll need a reference point.

On this particular piece… So the mistake we made here is when I moved the fence back off camera to make that surface of the bed a little bit larger for the piece of wood, I neglected to square up that fence back to the bed again. So now we need to send that block through a few more times to get it squared up. It was out a couple of degrees. I tried to show that on camera but it wasn’t showing up too well.

You want this surface to be as perfect as possible because everything’s gonna reference off of this.

So, if you’re really in to wood, let me introduce you to what we are going to do here. We do have an Eastonmade 12-22 log splitter, and we got a Blockbuster tumbler that we used to clean the firewood after making it and before we put it on a truck. We’ve also got a WoodMizer LT15. It’s a manual system, and we do collect our own logs on a trailer with a log arch. We also get logs delivered here. I have firewood delivered here. So, if you’re into all those things, than this is the channel you’ll be wanting to follow.

Right here we’ve taken that block off the joiner and put it on a band saw. As you can see we referenced off that first mark now we’re referencing off the second. Now we’re creating ourselves a block of wood we can use to make projects out of.

Now, I’m gonna take you through another step with hand planing this block, and for no particular reason other than just to brush up my skills and to show you where I start and what happens as time goes on.

Everything are I’m showing you here I’ve recently learned from YouTuber Rob Cosman.

I think he’s got a lot of knowledge to share when it comes a hand tools and that’s… I’m of the belief that of doesn’t have a cord plugged into the back end of it, then i don’t on how to use it. But, this is something I always wanted to try. So, I really enjoy doing this. It’s opened up a whole different world of wood working for me.

I find myself wanting to do more and more work by hand, you know, different projects that I like to build: furniture, things of that nature. Making boxes, doing dovetail work, things like that. I’ve always had an interest in doing it.

My background is in remodeling contractor, so I’ve done all the uh…the renovations, additions, things of that nature. Just all your typical remodeling work. I’ve been doing that for thirty plus years. I’ve always had a passion to be doing this kind of work. I do a lot of wood turning, also. Like making bowls. Not much on spindle turning, rather like making bowls, vessels, off-center turnings, I like to try.

So, I’m finally at a point my life where i can get a little more involved with this stuff. But, I really enjoy this hand planing work, and this is nothing more than testing my own skills. Making sure I keep practicing. It is a good feeling when you get curls coming off of that. A good sharp knife is the ticket. There’s no doubt about it. And Rob Cosman’s videos on YouTube, you’ll find…. just look him up. And, he has multiple videos showing different techniques. I highly advise going there and seeing what he has to offer.

The other reason I like the guy is he’s also involved with the Project Purple, which is a Purple Heart for Veteran’s Program. And, I stand behind that. I think it’s for a great cause.

So if you made it this far in the video, and you think you might be interested in following along, well feel free to Like and Subscribe. Be one of the first Subscribers that we get for this channel. It is brand new. I’m dabbling my toes in the waters here to see how we can make something of it. I got things I like to share with people, and I’d like to continue on doing that.

So, I appreciate you watching. Hopefully, you will Subscribe, and we’ll keep this content coming.

Make it a great day, okay!