Had a 4 inch thick slab of pine, and needed a 2” thick slab. Plus the one I had still had the pith in it. So I set it up and cut a few grooves in it, then went after them with a chisel.
For scale, the chisel is a 35mm wide framing slick. The slab is 16-18 x 22 inches. Hatchet and adze will be next, then a drawknife. Eventually it’ll be the seat for a Jimmy Possum chair.
I probably could’ve resawed it, but the half I removed had the pith of the tree in it, and I would’ve ended up cutting THAT out, leaving me with two smaller pine boards.
Yeah, I wasted some wood, but I got it done in a morning. Couldn’t think of any other solution that I would’ve finished in a full day. And my little Milwaukee cordless 5” circular saw was a champ. Four M18 12Ah high-output batteries used in rotation. As each overheated, I swapped it for the next.
Couldn’t find a big bandsaw anywhere nearby. The lumber yard would've done it if I’d squared the edges first, but I’m thinking I might want one waney edge.
Amazing effort Dave 👍 I can see a chair seat or back already!
If I had to do that, I might have stacked some weights on the top and then dragged it around town on the pavement behind my truck. Great thing is no one would have bothered to even ask "why"
Thanks, Yeti. There’s a lot of that around. Guess we coulda picked a place with more help nearby. And cheaper lumber, but this one, at least, was a freebie that I hauled back from MN when we were up there 2 years ago. And I think I might finally have a line on some larger chunks of pine more locally.
Got it “flat enough for layout,” in about an hour and a half this morning. Scrub plane, followed by my tranny jack plane. About 2.5 gallons of wood chips.
And yeah, the thought of gluing together a buncha tubafors has some appeal, but even those are getting pretty dang expensive. Most of them here have little maple leafs stamped on them.
