Cutting trenches in back of oak sleepers

Discussion in 'Carpenters' Talk' started by Jerseyoak, Mar 24, 2008.

  1. blueassedfly!

    blueassedfly! New Member

    jerseyoak
    im with lam on this you do not want to be lugging sleepers around as they are HEAVYso i think i should lend you my











    fully trained beavers, very fast and cheap to run LOL ;)
     
  2. Mr. Handyandy

    Mr. Handyandy Screwfix Select

    I still fancy the chainsaw. Little electric one(you can get stands for them so can set the depth of cut-bit like using a mitre saw but without sliding action).

    Something to slide the sleeper along, with a straight edge.

    Bit of a rough cut, but sleepers are supposed to be rustic, rough-ish.

    Take out a lot more wood than other things, and a lot faster.

    Mr. Handyandy - really
     
  3. lamello

    lamello New Member

    Handy I am sure you can do a few the way you are suggesting, but the way to make money on production work is to make things as simple as possible, basically to make it idiot proof, if this guy wants to churn these things out then he needs to find a way of being able to take these sleepers from the raw state to the finished state without there being the possibility of an error, if there is no possibility of an error then the job can be accomplished much faster. If for example I wanted to make 200 triangles of ply I would just make a jig and churn them out, this job is just right for a jig for a router to take all the thinking out of the job, if he wants to make a pair then sure chainsaw them or whatever, but if he needs to make them quick neat and tidy then a router is the way forward in my opinion
     
  4. murrmac

    murrmac Member

    got to disagree with lamello on this one.

    ok, putting them on a panel saw wouldn't be the brightest way for a production run (although I would still do it for one or two) but the dado head on a RAS has still got to be the best solution, and I like the chainsaw idea as well. It is the simplest thing in the world to set up a bench to facilitate repetitive cuts on a RAS, and the chainsaw could easily be set up for production work as well.

    the router set up would be fine as a finishing operation, but the depth of trench is 20 mm.

    no way would I want to do that in old oak in less than three passes, so the time factor rules that out imo.

    if this is rustic furniture, as I suspect, how accurate does it all have to be anyway ?
     
  5. lamello

    lamello New Member

    Thats what opinions are all about. The point about production work is that the less setting up and the less room for error there is the quicker you work and thus the more money you make. This blokes brief is to find away of knocking out these trenched sleepers fast and accurate with a smooth finish. If he is knocking these out at a rate of knots he needs to find a way of eliminating as many stages of the process as possible tooling changes and setting up time included. Whether he needs as accurate and as neat a finish or not is irrelevant, thats what he has asked for. Production work is all about jigmaking and making things as simple as possible. If he walks into his workshop with a stack of sleepers and crosscuts them all to length and then without any tooling changes/stop setting or marking out achieves his desired result then that is the perfect result. Chainsawing them will not be anywhere near as efficient as routing them otherwise the world and his dog would be chainsawing all tenons and just tidying them up with a router. As for the depth issue I would have no issue going to a depth of 10mm per pass with a quality cutter and a quality router. Even if you were to go in three depths it would still only add on maybe a minute per piece. As I say its an opinion but the way I would advocate doing it would require no setting up, no marking out, no tooling changes, basically toppping and tailing on the crosscut then plonking the jig on and routing away. Wheras with a dado you will need to top and tail, then change the tooling over, measure and set the stops for both shoulders, set the depth and then make at least 8 passes to cut the trench. Sure it is a fair way of doing it but the setup and tooling changes really eat into how efficient it is. I would hope to be producing these pieces at the rate of perhaps one every 3 mins once I got going. You would need to be going some to end up beating that when you factor in tooling changes and setup times. I did a lot of production work in my younger days, thousands of plinth blocks and corner blocks etc etc and eliminating potential drains on time is the key.
     
  6. lamello

    lamello New Member

    How precisely would you set up a chainsaw for production work like this?
     
  7. murrmac

    murrmac Member

    > How precisely would you set up a chainsaw for
    production work like this?


    yes, a valid question.

    I can picture in my head how it could be done, by welding up a basic swivelling clamping system to hold the chainsaw so that it would produce a straight square cut every time, and there would be a hole drilled through the plate to take a threaded rod with a locknut on either side which would contact an adjustable depth stop attached to the bench at the back of the sleeper, so that the depth of cut was accurately controlled.

    however, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to agree with the router suggestion.

    if you were going to do this operation thousands of times, for the rest of your life, then I <u>would</u> go the chainsaw route, as I believe that the actual operating time would be quicker than using a router, but the time spent in building the contraption would hardly be justified unless you are planning on doing thousands of them, and I cannot see where there is a market of thousands for oak sleepers.

    better budget for the most powerful router you can find, with a 3/4" replaceable blade cutter, and a plentiful supply of spare blades.
     
  8. qqqqq

    qqqqq New Member

    *

    Message was edited by: Screwfix Moderator 1 due to unsuitable content
     

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