Reaction wood...

Ned Bulken

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Lakeport NY and/or the nearest hotel
Man oh man, had a couple of 'fun' moments this afternoon. I was ripping these boards down for more cutting board stock, and I had a couple of maple and a couple of walnut boards clamp right down on the blade as I was ripping them. I shut the saw down, pulled them off the blade, bumped the fence a smidgeon and tried again, got through them, but it wasn't fun. I was ripping relatively wide boards... 8, 10" wide 5/4 and 4/4 into 3 and 4" wide strips.
I left a couple in wide form, and Ill rip those to rough width on the bandsaw, I just didn't feel like swapping out blades on that when I hit the trouble boards. NO harm no foul, just a few tense moments.
 
Ahhh the old pucker moment, btdt lol, don't know what you use Ned, but I got one of these splitters and have been very satisfied for what it is/does. Glad it wasn't any more serious!
Ken,
I had my blade guard/splitter on (Using it 'all' the time since my kickback earlier in the fall)... These boards were clamping down on the Front of the blade, let alone the splitter section.
If its clamping down on the blade, you need to just hammer through it. That's the only trick to it.
Karl,
yeah, that's about what I did on a couple of them, slowed the feed rate down to a crawl and gnawed my way through the board. My power is so crappy out there though that it popped the circuit breaker if I tried to horse things through. I got through enough of them that I have stock to work with.
 
Karl,
yeah, that's about what I did on a couple of them, slowed the feed rate down to a crawl and gnawed my way through the board. My power is so crappy out there though that it popped the circuit breaker if I tried to horse things through. I got through enough of them that I have stock to work with.

That makes a difference, and one of the reasons I won't buy anything less than a 5hp tablesaw for cutting, (dados is a different story). The other thing is, that you don't want to slow down, maintain speed. Slowing down just makes it harder. The heat builds up, the wood will start expanding even more, and the blade starts building up more pitch. It is very seldom that I run into a board that I stop on. If I do, it usually just gets cut up and thrown away.

On the flip side of that, some of the higher horsepower saws with 12" or 14" blades are scary. I don't like pushing anything through a Northfield by hand, same with the Powermatic model 72/74. The blade is so far out into the field of the table that its awkward to run.
 
If its clamping down on the blade, you need to just hammer through it. That's the only trick to it.

Been awhile since you used a 1.5 hp (or less) contractor saw, huh? ;) Hard to hammer it through when the blade stops completely. :D Like you, though, if I run into a board giving me much of this type of problem, I generally just go find another board.
 
If the board has clamped on the blade, I get the board off (with the saw stopped) then cut again without moving the fence. The first cut has usually relieved the stress, and the second cut normally goes right through, cleaning the edges where it clamped. I haven't had to try a third time, but I can imagine it would work (but if there is that much stress, it may be time for a new board).
 
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