Wood

I wanted to recycle the old wing spars...lots of great old spruce in them.  I decided to use them to make new cabin door frameing.  The problem is that the old spars are 3/4 and 5/8 thickness...and the cabin frameing is 1/2. 

I set up my band saw to re-saw the old spars down to 1/2 thick.  I used a 1/2 inch, 6 tooth per inch blade and a home-made fence.  And a slow, slow feed.  Checking the resulting boards with a dial caliper I found the blade wandered about .030 (the boards were about .530 to .560 thick).  Photo 1.

I used a hand plane to remove the high spots and then I went to work with a belt sander.  I used an old Sears belt sander mounted upside down on a plywood base.  Photo 2.  After planeing and sanding my boards were nice and smooth and  running .510 to .530 thick...close enough.

Tom Baker was kind enough to lend me his old door frame boards (original!) to use as patterns.  So I just traced around Tom's frames and then back to the band saw to cut them out.  Photo 3.

The cabin wood frameing turned out beautiful.  It all looks like new, but with that mellow 60 year old patina.  Photo 4.  I set the wood pieces aside for varnish and fitting with the stringers later.  AND I still have plenty of old spruce left in those old spars!

Link to Stringers

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