Paulownia veneers with a skil saw (muchos fotos)

In the “look what santa brought” thread, I mentioned cutting paulownia veneers with my new christmas pressie to myself,

a Hitachi circular saw.

So here’s the follow on thread, with some results.

A couple of months ago I bought almost half a tree trunk of paulownia.

Bark and everything!

About 8 feet long, a foot wide, and 4 inches deep.

I got another chunk sent to a joiners shop, and asked them to cut it into 3 mm (almost 1/8") planks.

They came back beautiful, 6 inches wide and 8 feet long.

But the price!!! for NZ$60 worth of wood, there was a NZ$100 bill for the labour!

Made a couple of boards with that.

So I set to figuring out how to cut my own.

My uncle has a decrepid old table saw, made shortly after the birth of christ.

It has a 3 inch max cutting depth, so I tried cutting 6 inch planks, by doing a cut from each side.

This was pretty dismal, getting the cuts lined up was every bit as hard as i’d expected.

I’ve had a fair bit of carpentry experience, so i knew that was coming!

I settled for cutting 3 inch wide planks, from one pass with the table saw, and made a nice board out of those.

But wide planks cut down the amount of work needed to fit them together - fewer joins, less time, less to worry about…

I’ve beed wanting a new saw for a while, just been getting by with my 18V cordless.

Bought a sexy 8 1/4" saw, so stoked, i’m a tool fiend.

We don’t have the rear motor worm-drive Skil 77 saws in New Zealand, all you can get are sidewinders.

I loved the 77’s in california!

I figured with the right jig, I could cut better than a table saw.

Table saws only work easily when you have a dead straight piece of timber, or are prepared to cut off a lot to make it straight.

And even then the cut pieces can twist themselves when the grain is severed.

Walking a large bowed piece of lumber round the fence on a table saw leads to inconsistent results.

Next post details what I came up with, but first some photos:

My new saw has a max cut depth of 3 inches, so i’m aiming for 6 inch wide planks, from 2 opposite passes with the saw.

I got a piece of 4 x 4 inch 90 degree angle-iron. (“L” shaped steel) Drilled holes, and bolted it to the base of the saw.

Slightly slotted the holes in the angle steel, to allow for adjusting the thickness of the cut, 1/16", 1/8", whatever.

I tacked an old piece of exhaust pipe on with the arc welder, to use as a handle.

Just roughly put on until I decide it’s in the right place. Ignore the crappy welding, it’s been a long time since i’ve arced,

and the fuse kept blowing!

When doing two opposing cuts on a table saw, the two opposite faces of the piece of wood must be perfectly parallel.

I had got the local joiners shop to run it through their thickness planer, then tried my earlier table saw cuts.

Holding it firmly against the fence was impossible - uneven veneer!

So i designed my skil saw jig to reference from the same face of the wood, the side face, for both of the 2 cuts.

So a put the saw on it’s side, and slid the angle iron along the the side face of the wood, using gravity to help.

photos of the saw set up -

The piece of paulownia I had left was 4 inch by 5 1/2 inch at 8 feet long.

3 strips is just enough for a little thruster, so I aimed for 1/16" by 5 1/2" planks.

I’ve made a few indestructo boards with 1/8 paulownia for other people, so this one is going to push the weight/strength limits,

and will be for me, my favorite 6’3 swallow I keep remaking.

I set the gap between the blade and my new jig at a bit more than 1/16, to allow for sanding the rough sawn faces down, and to acccount

for play and delflection of the blade.

Being such a soft wood, the blade remains relatively cool, minimising distortion/deflection of the blade when ripping.

Ripping a dense hard wood at full cut depth is a whole different proposition than cutting balsa-like wood!

I measured between the blade and the jig at both sides and the middle of the blade, very accurately, and set the blade so it was running perfectly true

with the guide.

It’s not important if the blade and base of the saw are exactly 90 degrees, as the saw base is not being used to guide the saw, the jig performs

that function.

The first plank went pretty well, a little wobbly, so there was a bit of an offset ridge where the two cuts did not perfectly line up.

I smoothed that out on the second veneer.

The only really rough bit was from coming off the end of the block - there is no un-cut wood ahead to support the saw, so the weight of the saw

makes it dig into the timber at the end.

I had forseen this, and already have plans to make a follower on the jig, that runs behing the blade within the cut, and supports the weight of the saw when this

happens.

I wanted to see how bad it was, and what happened, before I make a solution. Don’t solve something until you know it needs solving!

The third cut was pretty much perfect, except for the ends of course.

Photos of the results:

And the last pic

Cheers!

More beer for me now

Kit

Nice work KK way cheaper than buying a good quality table saw and thicknesser… DOH

Its a great feeling to rip down timber and make a board from it, My latest is 2.5mm paulownia compasand. I had a whole heap of offcuts from building an outrigger canoe. I have a 80cm cut on my table saw and run the timber thru that to get ~ 4mm thick planks then run that thru the thicknesser (carbtech one) By placing some MDF on the base of the thickness so you dont run the blades into metal. You can get right down to ~1.5mm but what i found is that i got a bit of timber ripping from the face on the thinner venners. The finished face is great no need to sand much at all.

You are right i got a fair bit of walk off the table saw need to set it up with a finger fence. But running thru the thicknesser sorted all that out.

cheers

Thanks man!

Yeah, i’ve been looking at thicknessers and table saws, not cheap…

I’m looking at buying a cheap old 6 inchbuzzer (table mounted planer).

Then, i can saw off a veneer slightly oversize, and run it over the buzzer with a block of 2 x 6 on top to apply downward pressure.

Next, a light buzz over the face of the big block of wood to prepare it for the next pass of the skil saw.

All veneers need a clean up with a planer/thicknesser/sander anyway, and this way would minimise waste and labour, with the cheapest of multipurpose tools!

Although my circular saw is the best you can get.

I’m a poor student, so this is the way things have to be done!

Gotta use the engineering brain for something during the uni summer break… :slight_smile: ha ha

Kit

So your planks are 80 mm wide?

Your not double cutting and going for 160mm?

If you’ve tried it i’d love to know what you came up with.

I do like the look of the narrower pieces of wood though! sort of looks more parquet floor like.

It does add time to construction.

How do you find the strength/flex/weight balance with the 2.5mm paulownia?

The ones i’ve done with 3mm feel pretty bullet proof.

Their flex is not extreme, but I find it fine for small wave, light-weight boards.

In under head high conditions, you’re more tic-tacking the board like a skateboard, than carve-springing through turns…

The weight of my last one is 2.5 kilograms for a 6’0 x 19 x 2 3/8, thats including plastic Speeed Fins.

Fins systems add soooo much weight! Feels unbreakable… don’t speak too soon tho.

I’m gunna try and break (bad choice of words) the 2 kilo barrier on this one, a 6’3 x 19 x 2 1/4 swallow.

Pics of my last two boards -

Kit

kksurf: mate that’s genious.

Kit

those boards are choice bro, man i love the look of solid paulownia (kiri), I went and done WRC tee bar stringer and inlays so have broken the kiri up a bit.

yeah just went with 80mm wide planks, would have tried to butterfly the boards but still getting the hang of the table saw. I did run out of usable Kiri so had to use a bit ot balsa in the board as well, unfortunatly its on the deck and the outside band of the rail.

Board is built for me and is 6’2" by 16.5N 23.4 by 17.75 tail and just over 2" thick weight is just over three kgs. solid tail and nose blocks added some weight as did FCS plugs after sandthrus with the hard arse plastic and glass patches over them. I also used up bits and pieces of left over glass in the shed on my first compasand 4oz under over bottom 4oz under 5.7oz over with 6oz patches on deck. So did over build it.

flex feels good but havent done the jump up and down test yet … compared with the 2.5mm balsa side by side on the deck its shite loads stronger. Mod of elasticity which effects flex and strength is related to density so you can get away with a thinner sandwich to a certain degree (stiffness is still goverened by thickness). Are you doing composite engineer at uni? if so you probally know way more than me but I will do some calcs when i get back to work and give you a comparison. But the only real way to compare would be to do two boards the same but with the two different woods.

Not happy with the FCS system will try and build my own plugs next time alla Sabs and/or BB, will probally use some 25mm solid kiri blocks and router and resin fill…

very cool kit

i prolly will get a bandsaw i think

but thats deffinatley an option

I have some agave stems that are ready to mill.

Do you think after the bandsaw you need a thickness planer?

I am looking at used bandsaws now too.

Cheers

Ian

Well, I be danged!! Nice work, and beautiful boards. 2.5 Kg’s is great.

kit

they look wicked man