WoodSawsandSawingPractice-MechanicalEngineering.pptVIP

Wood Saws and Sawing Practice Tier 2: Technology Module Basic Woodworking 1 There are three levels of wood working that can be characterised by the level of freedom in the shapes created; primary conversion, secondary conversion, and product creation. Figure 1.1: Log Profiling Primary conversion is the process of breaking trees into timber. This is done in mills by large machines that are usually automated. The process begins with chippers, which consist of one or more spinning discs containing knives that both face the log and chip the removed waste. This replaced cutting the log as the chipping of the waste is now included on the operation. This process creates a faced log or cant, but there is a subtlety to the process. A cant that has been faced on all four sides can still have rounded corners and usually does. This is to prevent the chippers from removing too much wood and wasting the panels that could be produced from the outside edges. These panels would then need to be trimmed to remove the bark. Once four sided cants have been produced, they are profiled and multi-sawed into standard lumber ready for use in either secondary conversion or product creation. The saws are large blade twin arbour ripsaws with multiple blades on each arbour. The spacing between the blades on each arbour is variable allowing the blade position to change to meet the profile. Figure 1.2: Four Sided Cant Basic Woodworking 2 Secondary conversion refers to the work done by builders, furniture producers and other similar industries. The wood is received from the saw mill and made into something more useful by mitring, bevelling, ripping and cutting to length. There is much more freedom in this level of production as usually the wood is for use and not for resale and therefore no standard sizes are required. The difference between this and product creation is in the tools used and the use for the wood. There are two basic types of cuts associated with secondary conversio