My in-laws had a cedar barrel sauna at their cabin with a wonky heater that never got used. During a recent remodel the opportunity arose to dismantle the thing and eliminate it from the deck where it had weathered over 20 years of snowy winters and withering summers.
not THE sauna, but you get the rough idea:
The barrel itself is all tongue and groove with metal bands holding it all together. I broke it down and salvaged all the wood that was not too foregone.
I have decided that I’d like to make a composite sandwhich board of the “open face” variety using the salvaged cedar boards for skins and rails…
…so the surfboard workshop is back to a woodshop again
In parallel, I am taking a mish mash of salvaged redwood (from a garage door in long beach, thanks craigslist!), balsa, paulownia, cedar and basswood and making 4 or 5 alaia/paipo for my brothers and myself
these are two of the alaia…I have the rough panels sorted, just need to clamp and glue this week…
the rest of the cedar gets edged on the table saw to create a square surface
once it’s edged, I slowly resaw it using a thin kerf blade…ooooh, new sawblade is good sawblade!
once I get through it, each piece of cedar will yield about three pieces that I can use for the skin/rail builds
30 boards x 3 slices per board x 3 passes to make each slice = 270 passes on the table saw…and that’s all before I have to thickness the wood for the final build
this is really dicey work on the table saw so I’m doing it all slowly, in batches, without beer and with tremendous focus on finishing the project with all digits intact…
