The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

Off and since the early 1980's, I have tried resawing split logs on my 12" Sears band-saw, with mixed results.

I ran across an article in a woodworking magazine, that said there were a couple of secrets to successfully re-sawing wood on the band-saw:

1. Use the biggest blade possible with 3 to 4 teeth per inch

2. Build and use a fixture to hold the work-piece

The article included a link to a 2007 plan for the re-sawing fixture.

Band-Saw Blade

A while back, I bought the biggest blade that will fit my Sears 12" band-saw, which is 1/2" wide.  It has 4 teeth per inch.  I installed it for the 1st time on my band-saw.

Next, I built a fixture using 3/4" thick plywood.  The design is nothing really unique.  You can attach the workpiece to the fixture with screws, with hot melt glue, or 2-sided tape.

I was surprised at how well the fixture worked. I was able to re-saw pine and walnut at a thickness of 1/4 or 1/2" thick.  I will be using this fixture more often to rip expensive woods into 2 usable pieces versus planing, and to convert firewood into usable lumber.

Blade

Going through my records, I was surprised that I bought this blade back in 2012, I thought I bought it in 2016.

Converting Walnut Logs to Lumber

Once I got the fixture built, I started converting walnut logs to boards.  Sometimes I used hot melt glue to temporarily hold the work-piece in the fence, other times I used screws, depending on the geometry of the work-piece.  All-in-all, the resawing operation went great!

Resawing 3/4" thick Cherry

I had a project where I needed to make cherry pieces that were 1/4 to 3/8" thick (bottoms for cherry baskets with ash steam bent handles).  In the past, I would simply plane down the 3/4" thick stock to get 3/8" thick stock.

I decided to try the resaw fixture.  It worked great.  The resultant boards were the same thickness through the length of the cut.  I ran them through the planer to "kiss" them and remove the rough bandsawing marks.  This saved me a bunch of money in terms of expensive cherry boards!

I was expecting to have issues, but I did not.  When I installed this 1/2" wide blade, I did make sure that it was tracking on the center of both wheels.

Closing Thoughts on This Project

I am very happy with this resaw fixture.  I plan on using it a lot in the future to resaw lumber versus planing it down to thickness.