Home Improvement Today?

Trying to take to much per pass. The cedar should be cake, pt is more of a pain.

 

What are you using? I don't know if its the redundancy or the hours but we are killing them. 1/2" Ryobi, Porter Cable and Bosch, all good tools that I thought would handle the job didn't last a day.

 

Still just pine though

Get a good plunge router and set the 3 depth stops for increasingly deeper cuts

 

3hp Porter Cable

You're seriously doing something wrong if you're killing routers in a day cutting pine

 

Explain how you cut these slots step for step and we'll tell you where your burning up the router.

 

PT pine, it's heavy and wet...but yes soft. And yea, I know we are doing something wrong. I know routing is not the answer unless we have a beast...it's just too much wood to eat in a day. Was really looking for a portable, radial based dado solution, that i haven't seen before.

 

Slotting beams for rafters essentially. It's an aesthetic look for pergolas, decks and arbors that we manufacture but we have to cut in the field several times a week. So..in shop we take an 18' 4x8 cedar beam for instance, attach it to it's matching beam and have (17, 1 per foot) 2" deep by 1 3/4" cuts to make in the joint beam.

 

And as I said earlier...I have a radial arm with a dado in the shop for non field work.

 

? Like that?

 

Look up Skil 117 groover

 

That's only slightly better than the guy I used to use that had a 12 inch mitersaw with only the motor and not stand..

 

yep

 

Oh man , multiple cuts with a circular saw and a sharp chisel

 

OK if that's what your cutting I really don't know how your burning up routers. First I'd take a saw cut the sides and maybe two passes inside sharp chisel and boom done. There is not way that's going to make this as fast as the Ras in the shop. If your using the router get a spiral bit and only take 1/3 of the depth of the cut at time.

 

Thats exactly what I was thinking of building! Nice find....If I can find one. Looks like a variation of Skils old beam saw. Old school but Skil worms are so rebuildable though. Just searched images and that things a beast!

 

Why don't they build these anymore!!! Hand cut roofs on log homes or any home, that's a badass tool that appears went out of production decades ago. Nice find OZ, I'm on a mission to find one.

 

Most log home builders use a chainsaw on a table like this

http://www.bigfootsaws.com/head_cutter.html

 

chainsaw morticer perhaps?...

 

Yea, I've built several log homes ln the Durango and Telluride, CO area...chainsaw and holehawg were the main tools for the walls, and a bfh! But we did a lot of modern roof systems using engineered lumber cut in to the roof beams etc. was a bitch load of chisel and fit.

 

Those things are expensive