Milling & Prepping Blanks without a Band Saw

When I started to get more serious about starting wood turning, I did some research on what tools I'd need to purchase. I knew I would need the lathe and the various gouges/ chisels, and a bench grinder to sharpen those gouges and chisels. The last major tools I read about were a band saw and chainsaw.

A chainsaw is used to roughly mill up logs, while the band saw was supposed to be what you needed to turn the logs into smaller and more manageable blanks you can actually mount on the lathe. From what I could find, the band saw was really more of a necessity if you wanted to turn logs and wood other than prepared blanks from a store. I already had a chainsaw, a tiny little 14" electric that the previous owners of my house left for us when they moved out, and given the size of logs and blanks I wanted to turn, I was looking at a minimum of $600 for a band saw. I didn't feel like spending that much on yet another tool, so I figured I'd forgo the band saw, and do all of my milling with my crappy little chainsaw and see if you really do need a band saw.

Step one to going from a log to a bowl is splitting the log and removing the pith. I threw together a small log holder made of a few pieces of scrap 4x4 and 2x4 glued together with 4 vertical 2x4's with tops cut at an angle to hold logs securely.


I did many logs before I made this, and I can't stress enough how much faster, easier, and safer it is to have this made. If I was starting over, I'd make something like that before I milled my first log.   

Once the log is cut to length and put in the holder, you can cut it in half with the chainsaw, and ideally make two more parallel cuts on the outside to have two flat surfaces in your final blank. 

      


At this point, most turners would bring the blank to the band saw and make it round and ready to mount to the lathe. I've made a series of round templates out of 1/8" hardboard from 6" up to 12". I find the biggest one I can for the log I have, trace it with a sharpie, and then cut as accurately as I can with the chainsaw, taking off the four corners and cutting it to length. At the end, you normally end up with essentially an octagon. While it's not perfect, and you can't get as close to the max bowl size for your lathe starting out it's a pretty good way to save a lot of money on another tool purchase.




 

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