Working practise

[Parlourman]

Hello all,

I wondered if anyone would advise/give an opinion of good working practise. In particular regarding timber milling and stacking.

I am currently making my first guitar - I intend it to be the first of many.

The soundboard is King Billy - from a board 50mm x 300mm

The sides and back are Blackwood (went against the Toona after some bending failures)

My question(s) is this:

When taking stock from thick boards, what should be the thickness off the bandsaw? and should it sit, to relax/move before final sanding?

As regards working practise for the future - should I resaw the whole king billy board now - and stack it on sticks for future guitars? likewise for back and side stock (I haven't even thought of neck stock but i guess the same question arises).

I have found many answers to the technical aspects of making - but less about the practise of wood storing/stacking/ for future projects.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks

ParlourMan

[Allen]

It depends on how good your rewawing capabilities are on what thickness to take them off the saw. My work is predominantly ukuleles, and my finished thickness for most wood is 2.0mm and a bit under. I can reliably get wood off the saw without having the danger of getting spots too thin by cutting at 2.3mm. BUT that is a very well set up saw with sharp blade, good guides etc. Most people would give themselves a lot more room for stuff ups like a wandering blade, or the tendency for some saws to cut a belly in the middle of the cut. There is no point in getting a bunch of wood cut that ends up being too thin after cleaning it up on the drum sander.

I usually cut up the entire board when I'm doing a bit of resawing, within reason of course.

Wood always sits after resawing depending on how dry it was to start with for a couple of weeks to a couple of years. There will be stresses and moisture variations present that need to settle down to their new environment and dimension.

[Trevor Gore]

Never leave a board half cut(!) The new surface will inevitably dry out and many woods will surface check, so your next slice off the board is full of cracks. This doesn't happen if you slice the full board as the wood will move rather than crack.

[EricDownunder]

Cutting a thin board requires a good quality bandsaw blade, I recently demonstrated the difference between two blades on the same machine both blades were 30mm, the first was a very sharp standard sort of blade with a poor quality join allthough the blade cut well you could see clearly the join was causing a crappy cut every time it passed through the timber it would move off to one side even with the blade guides adjusted as far as I would dare ( even causing sparks every time the join passed through the guide) then I replaced it with a good quality tungstan tipped blade made by Henry Bros in Sydney, using a feather board and a good fence I can cut a 500mm by 250mm by 2.5mm thick board with a finish that looks like it was just been through a planer. It is very important to set up the blade square with the fence and guides if you want a good result.