How to Cut a Log on a Bandsaw

Did you know that you can use your bandsaw like a small scale saw mill; it's pretty cool, not really hard to do. I’m about to do it with this bandsaw, now a couple of things I’ve done to get ready for this. I’ve got an elm log here, the log is dripping wet green and it was fairly freshly cut, you want to cut the logs when they’re wet, while they’re green. I’ve got a right angle fixture that I fastened to the log, there are screws to through the fixture and into the log and it acts like a little out rigger here, and it helps stabilize everything. Without this right angle fixture, the log might roll as you start to cut into it, could bind up your blade in all sorts of bad stuff. On top of the log, I’ve got a line that I snapped with a chalk line that goes basically from pit to pit, I’m going to free hand follow that line from my first cut, get this baby cut in two and I’ll show you what it looks like inside of it.

Now you can see what that elm looks like inside, it's got beautiful grain. Now here’s a question for you, where can you buy elm? And the answer is you can’t buy it, it's commercially made, but here’s a way that you can cut it out of stuff that otherwise would have gone into your fireplace. Another great application for this, lets say you have a tree in your front yard that’s been there forever and the day comes when it has to go down. It's the tree that your kids had swings on, that they climbed in, wouldn’t be cool to take some of those pieces, cut them into planks and make them into lumber that you can use in your shop to make heirloom gifts for your family.

For the next step, we’re going to rinse off and setup the saw, put this face on the half section against the fence and start cutting planks off of the half section. Now one step in between in cutting half section and using the fence is like cut another flap here on the bottom of the half section. That way when the half round comes up here under the band saw, it's less likely be able to roll away from the fence. I put my bandsaw fence on the saw and I did drift compensation there. I got the distance between the blade and the fence set to the thickness of the material that I want to make and you have four quarter or one inch material in this case so between the blade and fence is set for an edge. Now, with that set, we can just ripping pieces off of here making planks just like a sawmill would.

Now I’ll take this piece and run it against the fence, let’s have a look though at good reasons for doing this. I already said that one thing that we can’t buy is elm planks. Now when I look at this piece, I have a beautiful book match between this two parts, so what I’ll do with this is I’ll set them aside, I’ll keep them numbered, keep them dry and then if I keep track of which piece is which when I use this in a project, I can get a beautiful book match in my project between this two parts. I’ll finish cutting this one up, I hope you try this technique out in your own shop, again just using a regular bandsaw you can do a little bit of saw mill work.