A slab is just a sled away

Ryan Mooney

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A sled away
A sled away...

New small slabbing sled to pair with the larger one I made last year. Same basic design, a piece of plywood with a strip of UHMW the width of the miter slot and some washers that catch the opening in the bottom of the slot screwed to the bottom. I broke out the welder (please don't look to close at the welds :eek: :doh:) and welded some nails onto the end of some 1/8" x 1" (well 2 1" and 1 3/4" cause that's what I had) strips of metal from the HD and welp there it is; works pretty darn good.

This is some pear I got from a friend and am I'm slabbing up for a small project for him.

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Nice Ryan :thumb:...your first pic show two tools I'd love to have...a big bandsaw and a mustard. Looks like you went with "black mustard" :)
 
how do you have the bottom of the log anchored?

I don't actually. The board across the front has three sharpened nails driven through it (and I screwed on a backer board to make sure they don't push out), basically drove them through, then used the angle grinder to make nice and sharp (more of a flat chisel shape than pointed, seems to grab a smidge better). I was sort of concerned about the bottom moving, but if you make sure its set flat and the front spikes are engaged and the top spikes are driven in for small stuff its been fine. If I end up noticing an issue I have two backup plans: adding a rear spike set, maybe on a T track or something to engage, or adding a spike strip along the bottom. I'm thinking the rear spike set may be a better idea as it doesn't depend on the log being any particular shape.

looks like your ready to become a lumber yard soon:)

Heh, well I cut a few 8"-12" x 5' logs up with a larger version of this last year and I can say with large degree of certainty that the sawmills having absolutely nothing to fear from me :thud: :zzz: I've mostly retired the large version of the sled although I retain the right to pull it back out if something special shows up :D Its nice to be able to cut up some smaller stuff if I find some neat orchard wood or something though.

Nice Ryan :thumb:...your first pic show two tools I'd love to have...a big bandsaw and a mustard. Looks like you went with "black mustard" :)

The Bandsaw is a Grizz 513X2F that I've had about 2 years and so far its been about all I could want. At this point the only major improvement would be if I split it into two so I had two of them and didn't have to change blades :thumb: I'm using a 3/4" Timberwolf blade here which is about as big as I think this saw can really handle. As far as I can tell the 1/2" seems to do about as good of a job so I probably will just use than once the 3/4" is done for.

The not a mustard-still a monster didn't go entirely unloved in this project, I took one of the logs that wasn't going to slab well and turned 4 small bowls out of it. The Pear is really beautiful wood, turns fantastic and has amazing swirly grain structure (the light was poor once I got those done so no useful pics). Honestly I've used even ~close to the capacity of the mustard so far exactly once (diameter, I've gone to the full length a fair bit) so it was probably overkill.. but I had the funds and the lure was strong :D
 
Looks good, Ryan. :thumb: I've got a sorta similar sled for cutting a flat face on unruly turning blanks. It holds the log on the ends, so it's limited in regards to the length of log I can cut. I like your open-ended approach.

...I'm using a 3/4" Timberwolf blade here which is about as big as I think this saw can really handle. As far as I can tell the 1/2" seems to do about as good of a job so I probably will just use than once the 3/4" is done for...

And when those wear out, you can save yourself a bunch of money by using Ellis blades instead. At the risk of sounding like an AM radio ad that plays over and over, the Ellis "flexback" blades are every bit as good if not better than Timberwolf blades, at about 1/2 to 1/3 the cost. ;)
 
And when those wear out, you can save yourself a bunch of money by using Ellis blades instead. At the risk of sounding like an AM radio ad that plays over and over, the Ellis "flexback" blades are every bit as good if not better than Timberwolf blades, at about 1/2 to 1/3 the cost. ;)

Yep :D :thumb: My last order for small blades went there. I don't expect to need a new large blade for a while (I have a 1/2 and a 3/4 so I can trade them out for sharpening).
 
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