kmmcrafts

Exactly, This has always been my experience with the free rough cut lumber that I get.. No way I would take lower priced wood ( Oak, or poplar for instance ) free like I do with this Walnut.. reason being, the lumber at my local lumber yard is planned and ready to use.. I don't know how other sawmills are around the country but my local ones have a dirt / dusty driveway and also where the lumber gets placed while waiting on the trucks to come pick it up. The log trucks come barreling in and the trucks coming to pick up the lumber as well. They stir up big clouds of dust.. that dust lands all over the rough cut timber and since it's rough cut you can never get the dust and grit out of it.. I've washed it off with a garden hose and a stiff brush and it still tears through my planner knives. Normally I can go a full year on planner knives but if I plane this rough cut stuff I'm lucky to get 50 boards through it without significantly damaging the knives to the point the planner won't hardly work. When my knives are starting to get dull on regular lumber I try to run as many rough cut boards through just enough to get them half way smooth so when I do need to clean up a board nicely later on it's not ruining a good set of knives. Also most times the lumber is fresh cut and really can't be used for a couple years so there is work involved in stickering ( stacking with air gaps between layers so air drying happens evenly) so I take up storage space out of the weather for two years before I can use it. In this case of Walnut I got it had been sitting in the lumber yard for 1 year so I probably will be able to use it mid summer this year. Like I said, I doubt people would really want to "buy and pay shipping" cost etc for this lumber unless I was to plane it down etc.. and that wear on my equipment and my time fussing with it I just don't think it's worth the effort for what very marginal profit if any I would make. Lots of folks say I suck on my post about the free Walnut lumber but they don't realize I really only saved this wood from turning into wood chips or campfire / wood burner firewood.. It's too nice for that but not too nice a deal that everyone makes it out to be. I do like getting it fresh cut from the mill better IF I have storage area to sticker it and air dry for a couple years because if i get it fresh off the mill it hasn't had dust collection time sitting out in the yard... however getting it fresh off the mill I have to stand there all day and pick the pieces out from the conveyor belt that is headed to the wood chipper and sort it off those belts with all the stuff that is really junk. That is a job in itself too and time away from actually scroll sawing or whatever, so like you say.. free isn't always worth it.

Bob took that thought right from me, LOL.. Typically a home hobbyist or very small business that cares about the reputation of the small business will make a higher quality product than a commercial company that is more worried about cost and time. A commercial company's bottom line is always about the money. A small owner operator business should be worried about quality and customer satisfaction.. and yes cost has to come into play as well but we should also not be trying to compete with mass produced items and their mass produced cost. This is why Handmade / Homemade typically can be priced higher than those China mass produced items.

Thank you!! This is great info to consider. I know I personally don't buy rough cut lumber.. IF I'm buying it I'm going to get lumber that's ready to use with the exception of if I need stuff that is less than 3/4" because I don't use a lot of solid wood that is smaller than 3/4.. so if I need smaller then I resaw and mill it to the size I need. That would be a lot of hassle for me to size up all the lumber in order to sell it online.. and what you said is exactly what I had thought.. I feel I'd have to mill it to size or sell it for almost nothing. Probably a whole lot quicker and way less hassle to sell the whole rough cut load locally to one person is what I'm thinking. I doubt I'd sell the stuff I don't have room for very fast anyway. I'm busy enough selling the craft items.. This wood might be easier to sell if I was interested in being a wood dealer or something.

Thanks for the info, does it come sealed in plastic or just packaged in a box and sent in the mail? The one time I ordered those real thin boards the boards were wrapped / sealed in plastic to help prevent them from cupping etc. This is why I have never really tried to sell some of the lumber I get because I'm not all that interested is spending hours sealing up wood etc.. If I can just cut some 24" pieces and throw them in a box & mail them out I might consider. But then I worry about the changes the wood might make going through the mailing system and the different areas of the world with different climates.. by the time the customer gets it it may not be usable and then I eat the cost of the whole deal..

For the most part I finish everything "after" it's glued and assembled etc. IF it's a wall hanging plaque with a backer and I have to finish it separately I use WeldBond glue which is supposed to stick to most surfaces.. never had a issue with them coming apart..

As many of you know I've acquired a fair amount of lumber, some people mentioned I should sell some of it online. I've never bought lumber online other than some very thin specialty exotics that was only 1/32" thick and only about 4" wide by maybe 15" long. My question is does anyone buy / sell rough cut lumber, and if so how large are the pieces and how does it come shipped? I'll likely just post this stuff I have on marketplace as it is. I would consider selling some online but my thoughts are most people aren't going to want rough cut and if they do it'd have to be long enough to be safe going through the planer. Not many would probably by rough cut since not everyone has a planer. I'm not all that interested in sizing / planning etc. Also if I was to plane and size it I would be concerned with cupping etc. during transport from one climate to another etc.

Good topic, I myself do finish "all" of the project the same.. I know the piece isn't seen by only the person that hangs it on the wall.. but to me it just doesn't make the piece seem cheapened up. Also if it is solid timber rather than ply, the wood will still breath and if only the front side is finished ( sealed ) the back side can and probably will breath so there is still a possibility of the piece warping / cupping... I'm not sure if it's overkill or not.. that's just my thinking process and what I do..

I found this photo on google search. Look closely at the front of the saw.. there is no white flip tension lever on top of the blade clamp like todays saws have on them. Then look just below the on/off switch and see the lever sticking out.. That is how the DeWalt saws tension the blade and how the early Excaliburs did. You slide the lever one way to tighten the blade and slide it back to release tension.. The farther you turn it the tighter you make the blade.. so it's variable tension unlike having to flip the lever all the way to lock it. Hope that makes sense to you.

No kidding? Dang I really suck then.. Now I know why you all say that. I've never bought much quantity of walnut because I knew it was pricey and most scroll projects I do doesn't look great made from walnut. I mostly use Cherry.. and I do buy it from a lumber store already edged, planed etc.. I just happen to need a piece of walnut for a special order a couple years ago and my brother hooked me up with some, then also told the other local mills I'm interested in walnut scraps.. now I'm overloaded in walnut. I put in a word about cherry.. I'm pretty sure I'll have plenty of it soon, and nowhere to put it cause I got all this walnut in my storage space, .. Surely this stuff I have is probably not considered decent because it does have areas with knots and splitting which is why it was rejected by the grade lumber buyers.. I think they require at least 6ft. long and also a certain width that is clear of knots and splits so it doesn't make the top grade. They are picky, it could be 5ft x 11.75 long and a perfect board but that 1/4" makes it a reject.. that's the kind of stuff I have here.. though some are also knots and splits.. great stuff for scroll sawing, cutting boards, and other small stuff where you can work around the bad spots. Heck some of this with the splitting is a dream for those that fill in splits etc with epoxy resin.

Well darn, I guess that means I need to unload the rest of the truck. I filled up my one storage space and still have more than half of what was in the first picture in my truck. I might put some of this on Marketplace but I have no idea of the value. I'd guess around 150 ish bdf since they estimated the load to be around 200 bdf.. I don't really even know how you calculate the bdf. I'm just a scroll sawer, Should be worth at least a couple hundred I'd think.

How close are you and how much you want? I have way more walnut than I need. I’m only taking this stuff because it was headed to the burn pile or wood chipper. Lots of good crafts wood here.

This should be the last of my walnut lumber. Hopefully I will be able to make room to get it all inside. Last two photos is what I had from last falls haul. I did use a small stack that I couldn’t get up above last year. Todays load has been cut for a year so it should be dry enough to use. I should be set on walnut lumber for a year or so I think. Now if he would just get some rejected cherry. The lumber graders will reject it if it’s not a certain length or if it has a split or knot in it within the certain length.

I cannot agree more with this.. PLUS, new blade styles and brands sometimes get mentioned that are not to most known about. Many folks have never heard of the SuperSharp brand of blade sold by PSWood. They are also a good blade but pricey and last I knew no reverse tooth option.. I like them for cutting thick wood.. but I only bought them to "try" and the Pegas are really good all around blade so I doubt I'd go outta my way ( pay extra money) to buy them again but someone else might. This is how we learn new things sometimes by bringing up topics that have been talked about many times over the years. Not to mention we gain new members all the time that have different methods of doing things that we can possibly learn from or give them some learning experiences.

When I use my Excalibur for the larger blades I typically will push down on the top of the blade chuck to take out slack when clamping the blade.. then I tighten the screw and apply tension and then again release tension and kinda do the same thing over. I find there is slack ( in my saw anyway ) in that upper arm and when applying the tension the first time round it pulls the arm fully down and releasing the tension I can see slack in the blade. When using the real small blades I do not do the re-tension the second time. While the tension set up on these is nice and simple for probably most of the average scrollers.. it's a shame Excalibur did away with the tension lever like on the DW saws.. The early saws had the same style lever. Once you put a lot of hours in on a scroll saw you do get a feel for how much tension you have just by the pressure it takes to push that tension lever, LOL Most times I just swap over to the Hawk where I can adjust the tension.. The only Excalibur style saw now days with a adjustable tension is the Jet saw.. But if you change to Pegas clamps then you lose that option, LOL. The top of the blade chuck on that saw has adjustable height by turning the tension lever will raise or lower the position of the chuck to achieve proper clamping and tension.

It's been around 10 years since I first bought the sample packs of Pegas brand blades. I bought samples of every style and size, the previous 8 or so years I used Flying Dutchman blades. I can tell you that I still to this day have most all those blades still in the sample packages.. I did try each and every blade so I did use at least 1 blade of each style and size. My sample packs have the Pegas MGT sizes 3,5,7 empty of blades so apparently I like these sizes, LOL. IF I had to choose one blade for all my projects I do I'd have to say #3 MGT.. second most used is the #5.. Not only does each person have a different preference but also every saw has a different set up. For a long time I used only Pegas blades on my Hawk and continued to use FD blades on my DeWalt / Excalibur. The DW you cannot adjust the saw for a more or less blade forward / back movement ( blade aggression ) and so the Pegas ( at first use ) was too aggressive for me on the DW saw.. I finally did get used to them.. but they are sharp and they cut much faster and took a bit more practice of controlling the cut. Now I use mostly only Pegas. I might use a #3 blade on the Excalibur where I normally would use a #5 on the Hawk cutting the same project. This is why I rarely will suggest a blade to anyone new or seasoned scroll sawer, because not every saw cuts the same. How the saw is tuned and set up makes a huge difference in cutting efficiency and blade life. Blade ( saw speed ) is another factor. in some cases a person can slow down or speed up a saw to make their comfort level with a certain blade. IF you find yourself pushing the wood harder than you should maybe you need to speed up the saw or choose a different blade. IF you find the cutting going too fast for you you can either slow the saw speed some or change a blade. Me personally, I run my saw on high speed for most all my cutting and adjust my sawing ability by swapping blades to get what I'm most comfortable with for sawing said project. I might have learned this technique from my first saw I had because it was a 2 speed saw and low speed was way too slow for me and high speed was kinda fast for me being a newbie at sawing so I learned to leave saw speed alone and look at various blades to find my comfort level.

Thanks for all the nice comments..

Over the past year or so I've picked up quite a few people on here that buy the clock inserts from me. Wasn't sure I should post this in the general section but I felt this would get seen by most here. Over the past 3-4 weeks I've been working / playing on a new website and if you have bookmarked my site in the past it'll no longer take you to the site, it'll likely take you to the new site which isn't launched yet. The new site hasn't went live yet but I was at the point of pointing my domain address to the new site so now the address for the old site has changed. For the time being I have added a " Clock Inserts" link in my signature so to get to the clocks quickly you should be able to find any posting I make or have made and in the signature area click the text "clock inserts" and it'll take you to the page where my inserts are. The KevsKrafts.com in my signature will take you to the new site.. but you'll likely get a page that says "opening soon" with a area to enter your email for notification of when the store launches. At this point I'm not certain a new site will ever be launched, I'm just testing other options than the site hosting I have been using.. each hosting place has good and bad points so who knows.. I may just put the old site back up with the domain going there again, LOL Anyway to get to the clocks just find the link in my signature until I get done playing around with new sites, actually kinda handy to just have a direct link to the inserts in my signature anyway.

Well I guess I’m about done messing with this guy. Struggled with how I wanted to do the arms and I finally settled on something simple. Overall it worked out pretty good. Sprayed a couple coats of Lacquer on it today. May do a light sanding and shoot another coat on it in a couple days. Was a fun and sometimes monstrous project that I had to put down and work on something else before I got mad and throw it. I will never make another one as It’s not my style of wood art to make. Almost declined making it in the first place and probably should have. But it is for a special occasion and person. Edit: Yes the clock lens is cracked, it's a old clock that I keep out in the shop to test fit when making projects.. I'll throw in a new clock before giving it to her. LOL.. My wife keeps on reminding me I can't use that clock in it because it's broke, LOL.. I keep messing with her saying it's not broke the clock works fine.. just has a crack in it,

Yeah thanks from me too. I've never seen this website.. now I have more clock patterns to add to my to-do-list.. LOL

I posted this idea and it's progress in the Laser / CNC group here on the village but since there is only 15 members and also since I did use the scroll saw I figured it was okay to post here too.. This project started with rough cut walnut lumber and cutting / planing / jointing it down to do a glue up of a final size of 24W x 15H x 3/4.. Once glued and sanded I put 2-3 coats of Shellac and then sanded it down to 400 grit. I then covered the entire face with Oramask ( similar to shelf liner but way better ) I then used the CNC Router to carve out the text. After the carve I sealed the carved out portion with 3 coats of Lacquer and then hand painted the text with white acrylic paint and then peel off the oramask. Next I scroll saw the grill / utensils from 1/8" Maple and glued that onto the sign with weldbond glue. Next I laser engrave the Red Stag bottle on the laser from 1/8 BBply and straight off the laser top coated the engrave before anything smudges. Then I cut the bottle shape out on the scroll saw and also glue it to the sign. Once all was in place and dry I top coat with 3 coats of Lacquer.. I like these projects where I can incorporate each tool.. I hope to be doing many more projects like this. If you go the the "groups" section and find the CNC/Laser groups and join you can see the progress of this from the original carve design model through to the finished project.

As Ray said, same saw different paint / stickers etc..

It's kind of funny how this works with my brother because he has always said if I need something special to go see him.. I typically buy my lumber that is from a lumber store that has been dried and planed.. But 4 or so years ago I desperately needed a small piece of Walnut.. and the lumber store I typically go to was closed that day and they always had very thick big pieces and smaller stuff was hard to find.. My brother took that as a "anytime he has some rejected Walnut I'll take it because I'm always looking for it, LOL.. I don't use it very often and mostly use cherry or poplar.. I've told him that I was about out of Cherry today.. so that'll probably be the next one he will load my shop up with.. Again what he gives me today I have to wait at least a year to use and I have to stack it up in my loft stickered so it can air dry.

Have also considered that.. most the issue with selling wood is sealing it up so the changes in temps / humidity don't warp / cup / twist the lumber.. Also getting it directly from the mill is a issue of having to store it for 1-2 years for it to dry out good enough to use.

Have thought about that and also have offered a few members free lumber if they paid shipping cost but everyone I've done that for declined when they seen the cost of shipping just a few pieces.. especially now that they changed the rates to calculate the box size and weight.. was much cheaper before they started the box sizing thing.

For those that don’t know my brother owns a lumber mill. They had the lumber grade people there sorting lumber and this lumber didn’t meet the requirements so either I was to come get it or it was going into the wood burner. I still haven’t used the full two truck loads of walnut he gave me last fall. And while there he reminded me I am supposed to go to another mill that has 200bdf of 4ft pieces that he gave me last month that they needed to move out of the storage area so I guess I should have plenty of walnut lumber for a couple years probably, While there he tried to get me to take a stack of spalted maple he has. He gave me 100 or so bdf about 10 years ago that I still haven’t used that I told him I was thinking about selling, burning or something because it doesn’t fit with my typical projects I make.