ray wrote in
news
This is going to sound weird but... a couple years ago I took the kids
camping in the Great Smokies. We arrived on a Monday when a lot of
the other campers in the Cataloochee valley were going home. One guy
who was leaving offered me his pile of firewood, which was very kind
of him, since I didn't have room for any when I packed. Anyway, the
firewood, cut to 18" lengths and split, appeared to be walnut. I'm
sorry to say I burned some of it, but I brought home a half-dozen
chunks. Does anyone have any ideas on how to cut it safely into
boards. I don't have a bandsaw, but I do have a table saw. I've
given some thought to making a sled with a wooden clamping device, but
the idea of the saw grabbing the chunk and flinging it makes me
nervous.

There's a number of folks in my woodworkers' group who gather their offcuts
and scrap, and take it over to one fellow's home each heating season. Ted,
who was a school teacher all his life, and raised 5 good kids with his
wife, learned more than a little bit about being frugal.

But his boys had to take away the tablesaw, when Ted had to have 4 fingers
reattached surgically, after cutting firewood with the thing, freehand.

Take Charlie's advice. If you can't afford a bandsaw, then do your
experimenting with a hand rip saw. Or find a neighbor who has a bandsaw,
and experiment. Or use a rasp, a drawknife or an improvised scraping
device to make a flat face on a piece, to see what the grain might reveal.

But don't use your tablesaw for this, until it's somehow closer to being a
board.

Patriarch