Cutting Big Boards

As I'm finally finishing the drywall on our bathroom ceiling, it's time to think about new trim in the bathroom. Of course, I'm a woodworker, so it's not much fun to go to Menard's and pick out pre-built molding.

Thus, it was not a difficult decision to make our own trim in the bathroom. Additionally, the style we wanted is "built up" from multiple pieces and difficult to come by at a box store.

For the project, I decided to make my first attempt at using rough-sawn lumber from our new wood working shop, CU Woodshop Supply. Even though I've been woodworking for about 8 years, I've mostly bought my lumber pre-shrink-wrapped at Menard's. They have a large assortment, it's usually in good condition, and it's generally cheaper than Lowe's. We've just never had a local source for rough-sawn lumber.

I chose poplar because we're going to be painting the trim in the bathroom, so the expense of a better hardwood would be covered up. I've found poplar is a little more resilient than ultra-cheap pine, so it doesn't get beat up as much. That's an important factor with four little boys running around.

After lots of tedious calculations, I figured about how many board feet I needed and headed over to the wood shop. Of course, I'd planned on 8 foot boards and most of their's were 10 feet. After some measuring, I decided I could use 10 foot boards, I'd just have lots left over. Because my Honda Pilot is my personal mechanical hero, the 10 foot boards fit fully inside on a very rainy day.

Fortunately, these were not totally rough boards. Both faces were jointed (which means the faces were relatively flat), and one edge had been jointed (so that it was clean and straight). Since I don't have a jointer, this is just the right wood for me.

My goal here was to turn these two 1.5" x 9" x 10' boards into several 1/2-5/8" boards for the trim work. Here are the process steps:

1. Uncut boards




2. Use my tablesaw to rip them down to less than 6" wide in order to fit on my bandsaw. Since these are 10' boards, ripping them required the full length of my shop, minus about 2 feet.




3. Use my bandsaw to cut the boards in half (from 1.5" down to ~3/4"). This is called resawing. Resawing is a bit tedious. I've done it before, but never on such large pieces. The length made the process much more challenging, making it hard to maintain a straight line. I lost a little more thickness here than I would have liked.
   






4. Plane the heck out of them to remove the resaw unevenness, and also clean up the rough-saw marks on the backside.




5. Finished boards. Now, they are in the state that they usually are from Menard's (minus the shrink-wrap). One reason I opted for the resawing on this project was that I wanted 1/2" thickness. Menard's doesn't have that, so I would have to plane down 3/4" boards, which wastes a lot of money.

All told, these two boards cost about $60, and I still have more than half of one unused (~$17 worth). If I had bought this wood from Menard's, it would have cost about $64, with no leftovers.

Did I mention that it was crazy cold on Monday night when I did this and I didn't have my wood stove going? 35 degrees...