Splitting bracewood

[joel]

How do you do it?

I've just been out in the garage trying to split my spruce brace wood. It's 19mm thick and 460mm long, well quartered brace billet I got from one of the aussie suppliers (can't remember which one.). After reading the Cumpiano section on splitting brace wood I thought I'd give it a go, as you're supposed to get the strongest braces this way. I'm using a 1 inch wide chisel and a mallet. Anyway, I've reduced a nice 90mm wide bracewood billet into so much kindling. The stuff simply won't follow the grain lines. I tried to make each brace blank 10mm wide and 460mm long (if they followed the grain), but I've ended up with 150mm to 250mm slivers with a 10mm wide base. I've tried it from both ends without success.

Am I doing it wrong? Is there a better way? Should I just use the bandsaw? The weather has turned rainy again, just after the RH had fallen below 60%. Been waiting weeks for the RH to get this low . So there's no hurry, as I won't be bracing my top and back until I get some decent RH.

[Allen]

Hey Joel, if I lived back in Canada and had heaps of spruce laying about, then I'd be splitting all my braces. We use to use it for kindling by the truck load.

I've split plenty of western red cedar shakes (shingles for roofs). You use a froe across the grain, not with the grain. This will split the wood so that there is no run out at all. Should be the same for spruce, but if the piece you have has lots of runout, you're not going to be able to get much usable brace stock from it.

Here, spruce is pretty damn expensive, so personally, I just clean up all the faces, and have a good look at each piece that I have. Then I pick the very best for the x-braces, and upper transverse brace. Then the next best for the tone bars, and finally the little pieces for the side braces can be used up from left overs. I slice everything up on the band saw and use the drum sander to get it down to the required dimensions before glue up.

[kiwigeo]

My method...I split off one side of a billet to get a roughly flat surface and then I bandsaw the billet into slightly overwidth braces. My experience has been that bracewood billets are rarely cut exactly on the quarter andsplit niceloy into nice lengths ready for making into braces.

[joel]

The funny thing is, the billets I'm trying to split along the grain have previously been split along the grain, obviously by the vendor. Each long edge was split when I got it. I'm curious as to why this bit of wood won't split nicely for me, but has split nicely for someone else.

Anyway, I'm trying to set up a little jig to help me guide long irregular bits into the bandsaw blade to get nice straight brace blanks with nice straight grain lines.

[Kim]

I'm with Allen on this Joel there is not enough spruce laying around to follow MrC's advice on this. I think it may be in the book, or it may have been in one of his post on luthierforum.com that he mentions that he could go through a lot of stock before he finds THAT bit, the bit that splits just right.

I do not see the point in being soo wasteful and I am sure with these times of greater focus upon conservation Mr C has probably changed his view to. Anyhow, I just plane a face and edge that will result in perpendicular grain and then rip on a small bandsaw.

As for why your supplier was able to split out billets when you cannot? Well my guess is that as he was knocking off much bigger chunks the wood was more incline to split where it was hit. When trying to do the same on a smaller piece, the wood is more prone to flexing or bending out with the wedging and this flexing absorbs energy and prevents a clean split. If you must have a split face, try splitting your billet in half, right smack in the middle with a froe and then plane to that face and rip from there. Splitting any more than this is just waistful and unnecessary IMHO.

Cheers

Kim

[joel]

Aahhh! I didn't know that Kim. I was under the impression from everthing that I've read that spruce should split along the grain relatively easily. I thought that the decision to split or saw the wood into brace blanks was entirely about how each person felt like doing it. Now that I've been educated, it's to the bandsaw for all bracewood billets!

Now I just want to salvage as much as I can from the hash I've made of this first one. I've got more billets, but it's about conserving as much as I can. I hate wasting wood (or anything else for that matter.) I should be able to get quite a few finger braces out of my pile of kindling.

[Grant Goltz]

One thing to ALWAYS remember when splitting wood. Split in as exact halves as you can. So long as you do this, it should follow the grain perfectly. Do NOT try to split off a single brace off the side of a bigger piece, it will always run out to thinner on the other end.

What is happening is that the thinner split off piece flexes and the wood fibers start tearing with the flex. If you split in halves, then to quarters, then to eights, etc., you keep the stress, and thus the flex on each side of the split equal, and the split goes straight.

All that said, after I establish a face that is running with the grain, I usually joint that face and another at 90 degrees to it and start ripping braces on the table saw with a thin kerf blade. You get way more yield and the pieces are just as with the grain as if you had split the whole billet.

G

[matthew]

And ... splitting with a chisel blade nearly always forces the split to run towards one way or other, due to the asymmetric grind. Sharpen up a brickie's 2" cold chisel, not too sharp so its splits not cuts, and use that instead.

[joel]

Two more bits of info that I didn't know.

Anyway, I finally bandsawed my long braces. 7mm wide in the rough. We'd finally had some nice dry days. The RH actually got below 50%! Of course, as soon as I'd made the brace blanks it started to rain. And rain. and the RH is npw back up to 85%. And many of the long brace blanks are now curved instead of straight. Bugger! Hopefully, they'll settle down soon and straighten out. Or maybe I'll try the bending blanket to heat them straight.