I'm building a retaining wall and some raised beds out of tanalised softwood railway sleepers (200x100x2400 or 5"x4"x8ft). I was wondering what the best thing to cut this size of wood with, is! I've got a Bosch jigsaw that takes extra long blades up to 250mm. Has anyone used a jigsaw in this way? If not, what do you recommend? Maybe about 30 cuts in total for now, some of them are angled though. My hand sawing isn't the neatest or would have had a crack at it like that. Cheers!
Hand saw would be a lot more accurate for the thickness. Jigsaw blade might make a straight cut on the top, but the blade will wander through the depth.
I certainly wouldn't use a jigsaw for it ... unless you're going for the wavy look. cut a good few sleepers a few years back, and used my Makita hand-held, corded, circular saw to do a full depth cut on each of the four sides, and then finally cut the unreachable middle bit with my handsaw. Mind you, mine were hard wood, real railway sleepers, so would have taken forever to cut by hand, whereas yours are softwood, so should be quite a lot easier with a good sharp handsaw. If your current hand-saw is old and blunt then this is your good excuse to treat yourself to a nice new one!
A good handsaw is probably going to be best for you. You could knock up a giant mitre box quite simply and quickly to help with your accuracy - you could even use the sawn ends of other sleepers as a guide assuming they're square of course.
Thanks, I will have a look at hand saws, any recommendations or will just a cheapo coarse cut stanley one do?
Pretty decent cut can be achieved with a course blade and steady hand, up to 300mm thickness apparently.
Get yourself a cheap 7 1/4" circular saw and run two cuts through them. https://www.wickes.co.uk/Wickes-185mm-Circular-Saw---1300W/p/141159
Handsaw 20 teeth will be fine, after all its only a big softwood plank, or if you're confident a chainsaw for ends that don't butt up against another.
Those are NOT railway sleepers, wrong size and softwood! If someone sold them to you as sleepers you have been done.
Most places sell both and call them both railway sleepers. I do realise that they wouldn't use softwood for train tracks, but then again, I'm not planning on having trains running on my raised bed. The difference in price is £15 for the softwood and £26 and upwards for the oak + extra for stainless fixings, so I went with the softwood because it's not going to be load bearing and it's tanalised so should last for a good few years. Regarding the size, I had a look round and most places selling the new softwood and hardwood sleepers are the 200x100x2400, but I found some reclaimed hardwood sleepers at 150x250x2600, but were too expensive @£31+vat each. The difference in size and type of wood will not make a difference for what I'm doing, but thanks for your concern
I found this thread when I was searching the internet for a way to cut through reclaimed oak sleepers (the big ones that weigh about 100kg and are as hard as stone) Now I have finished the job I can comment..... So the options are. 1. Chainsaw - messy/dangerous/inaccurate/noisy/dangerous 2. Stihl saw with ripper blade - expensive! And also dangerous/noisy 3. Reciprocating saw - inaccurate/time consuming 4. Circular saw - won’t go all the way through 5. Hand saw - hard work I ended up using a hand saw - it was not too bad, get a couple of new saws before you start. It takes a few minutes to get through each one but they are by far the most economical way of doing the job and you can get a very accurate cut if you mark out right.
Buy a good quality coarse cut teflon coated handsaw for this. Bit more expensive but you will not regret it as it is a lot lot easier than some cheapo £5 saw.