20 VIDEO Rough Cutting Wood to Length

In this video I want to explain how you can deal with long pieces of wood and bring them to your home to work on if you don't have a truck

Now, I do have a truck so I wouldn't be doing this procedure for myself and I'm not going to be using the truck for any reason

I'm just here to hold up the wood and the bucket. Before I get going, let me explain. This is not a mouse here on my jacket. This is what they call a dead cat

It's kind of a fuzzy thing on the top of a mic. I'm outside now, of course, and any wind makes the mic go funny

So, believe it or not, fur stops that sort of thing. Anyway, we've got a piece of wood and we've got a project in mind and we've got a vehicle, maybe a small vehicle, and we have to get that wood inside

So, we need to cut the wood, but we don't want or need to cut the individual parts to their final length yet

That'll happen in the shop when we can be more careful about what we're doing

Our goal now is just to get this piece of wood short enough to get in your vehicle

And we want to do it with the minimum number of cuts because, like I said, we would prefer to cut in the shop

So, this board happens to be 10 feet long. Let's say I can accommodate 5 feet in my car

Even a small car can do that because you can put it in the passenger compartment, you can lay it on top of the seats or whatever

So, let's aim for about a 5 foot length of wood. Now, in this case, the project I have in mind is the footstool that we're building in this particular section of the course

And I happen to know that the footstool has three kinds of parts. There's the top, that's 20 inches

There are the legs, those are 14 and a half. And then there's the cross piece, that's 16

So, let's go and take a look here. I should mention too that you're going to have to travel with some tools

So, of course, there's the saw, there's a square, a pencil and a tape measure

And the bucket too, actually, is important. And I'll explain that in a minute

So, the main thing to keep in mind right now is that we do not want to cut anything to final length

Because, I mean, you're in a parking lot somewhere. I mean, you just want to get this thing cut and get back home

So, we want to slightly overestimate the length of the parts we need before we're determining where that cut is going to be

So, the best way to do that is with the part sizes in mind, a tape measure and a pencil

So, let's go over to the board and I'll show you what I mean. So, the first thing I want you to look at is the end of this board

It's almost never possible to use the very end of a board when you're making projects

And there's two reasons for that. One is kind of easy to see

If you come around here you can see that there's some cracks here

There's a crack here, a whole bunch of cracks there. Let's just flip this over and take a look at the bottom

Oh yeah, look at that. The cracks extend all this way. So, we don't want cracks in our woodworking project

So, when we start determining, you know, like the top goes here, the legs go here, the centerpiece goes there

When we're figuring all these things out, we have to start after the cracks

Because we don't want those cracks in our final wood. In fact, in this case too, there's a couple of things to pay attention to here

A couple of other things. There's a knot here. A knot is where a branch was growing out of the tree

There's nothing wrong with knots, when they're tight like this. But you don't really want a knot right on the edge of your piece, say for the top. Why

Well, if we cut here, chances are the half of the knot that's remaining would be loose

And it would fall out. So, there on our footstool we would have a, you know, a semi-circular trough where the half of the knot would be

We don't want that. Another thing. Look at that. That's a defect there too

Now, if we were building a project that used pieces of wood that were narrower than this, I could tolerate that

That would be no problem, because later on I'd be cutting this piece of wood to width

But in this case, I'm using full width lumber for the project

There's no cutting to width. So, I don't want that. I don't want that in my finished project

So, now I'm starting my calculations further and further from the end of this board

And, once again, look at this. If I cut it here, you know, just to avoid the damage, well, I'm going to run into another knot

So, in this case, I don't want to start my measurements until I'm clear of all that nonsense

So, this, I'm afraid, will be waste. And one of the things you need to understand is that when you're working with wood, there will be waste

In fact, if you're starting from rough lumber, even high-quality rough lumber

you're going to waste at least 20% of the board as you cut the pieces and put them together

Now, we're not going to be wasting 20% of this board because it's a simple project

But, try as you may, you're not going to eliminate waste. I'm going to keep these small pieces for small projects

If you've got a shop with a wood stove in it or a house with a wood stove, you can use these scraps for kindling

There's all kinds of reasons to use them. But we don't want defects to enter into our work

At least not when we're dealing with fairly fine woodworking. So, I'm going to start my measurements here

Just one other thing, too. This is what they call the factory end of the board

Which means that it came from the sawmill that way. Now, sometimes, but not always, the end is square

See, this is a combination square, and amongst other things, it's a reliable reference of 90 degrees here

So, I put this on, and I mean, that's nice and square. That is perfectly acceptable in every way

So, if this board were perfect right to the end, with no cracks on the end, and that's pretty rare

I would have started my measurements right there. But because we've got defects, now you understand how to avoid them

and I give you permission to waste a little bit of wood because it's unavoidable

So, now it's time for the tape measure. So, now it's time for us to step off the lengths of the different parts

and get to that point where we're probably going to do just one cut

One cut of this board in the parking lot of the lumber yard

But we need to know where that is so it doesn't mess us up later. So, let's start thinking about the top, for instance

As I said, there's the top, the legs, and the cross piece. And we know the top's 20 inches

So, we're going to start from here. Now, the top, the final length of the top, is 20 inches

But I have to give it more than that because I want, remember

I want a rough cut, one rough cut in the parking lot. That's what I want

So, do I give it 21 1⁄2 at this stage? I would consider that a minimum because you may have to make cuts on both sides of that top

So, let's just give it 22 inches. Okay? So, 22, make a mark

I don't really have to mark it with a square, but I'm going to

Just so it's a little more clear for you. And in light pencil, I'm going to write top

Just so I know what it is when I get back to the shop

Now, do you remember the length of the centerpiece? That's 16 inches on my plan

So, let's allot 18 inches for that. So, 18 inches. Another line

Mark it. And then, fairly light so that we can erase it later

That's the cross piece. Now, the legs are 14 1⁄2 each. So, two of them together would be 29

And we want to add a little bit more. So, we're looking at maybe 31 inches allotment for the legs

But notice what's happening here. I mean, if I do 31 inches, well, I'm almost to the end of the board for the two legs

So, I don't really need to go that far over. Because remember, I just want the one cut so I can get it in my small car

So, let's just see. How much can my car accommodate? I thought maybe 5 feet might be reasonable

Well, we're a little more than 5 feet here. So, just under 6 feet

I think that piece of wood there, and this piece of wood too, because it's shorter

could fit in a small car. But let's say you've got a really small car

And you can't fit that. Then what we're going to do is we're going to make an allotment for..

Let's just see what it looks like. So, 14.5 plus another couple of inches for an allowance, and that's there

So, this side is certainly short enough to fit in any sort of small car

A little over 52 inches. And this side here... Once again, we're almost 6 feet on this side

So, it's like we're transferring the 6 footer from that side to this side

So, at this stage you have a decision to make. Can you accommodate in your vehicle a piece of wood that's a little bit shorter than 6 feet

I say you probably can. If you can't, then you could mark it here, make another cut, and have a small piece there

And you can also cut on any one of these lines. Because don't forget, we've got leeway

We've got extra wood. So, it's not a final cut. And chances are you're not going to be able to do a very good final cut with a handsaw in a parking lot anyway

So, you have to allow for that cut to be rougher and to be redone again in the shop

So, for now what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut this board right here

I'm going to assume that the two pieces can fit in your vehicle. The question now becomes, how do you cut a piece of wood when you're in the parking lot of Home Depot

So, let's just pretend we're in the parking lot of Home Depot right now, and I'll show you how you can go about doing that rough cut nice and efficiently

So, this is where the bucket comes in. I mean, it can be anything really

You just want something to put the wood up off the ground. In fact, you could even just cut it over your knee if you want

But a bucket makes things a little bit easier. So, we'll just put that here

And the saw. Now, this is my favorite handsaw by far. There's nothing else in the world that cuts as nicely as this

And it comes with a plastic sleeve. Keep the sleeve because when you want to store this baby, this is going to protect the teeth

I've used this particular one for quite a while. It's not new, but it's still going to cut really well

And let's just get the wood in position. Now, as I said, this is a rough cut

So, it doesn't really matter if we deviate from things. And later in the course, I'm going to be showing you a couple of tricks for cutting very accurately with a handsaw like this

But for now, we just want to get this thing small enough. So, put your knee on it

Give it a little bit of weight. Start the saw like this

Just really short little nibbles until you get it started. And then you're going to put some more power into it

But let me tell you about something. Take your hand away before you start applying some power

I wonder if you can still see it. About 30 years ago, I failed to do that

I had a nasty cut in my thumb right there. When I was a woodworking beginner, I left my hand there

I started cutting a lot. The saw jumped out. And a nice big fat... right into my thumb

So, well, there it is. There's the scar. You can see it

Don't do that. Anyway... Now, a saw like this. Look closely at the teeth

See, they're pointed forward, in a way. And that's why this saw cuts on the push stroke

It doesn't cut very much when you're pulling it back. The cutting happens when you're pushing it forward

So, with a saw like this, you want to give it an extra oomph on the downstrokes

Now, at this stage, we've got some danger coming. Danger on the horizon

And the danger is, if I keep cutting, the weight of this board is going to put a lot of stress on these fibers

And we're going to get a nasty break there. I don't know how far it would go

but it could extend the length of the board. And if I keep cutting

the weight of this board is going to put a lot of stress on these fibers

But it could extend to the point where the good part of the wood that we have would get damaged

So, if you have a helper, if you have someone helping you, that's a piece of cake

You just have them take the weight. And then you don't have to worry about breaking that off

But if you're by yourself, you might want to just tip it down

Just take the weight of it onto the ground. And then just..

Now, I'm almost through, right? Can you see? This is wiggling now

It's almost ready to let go. And I don't want to have a bad break here, even a little bit

So I'm just going to support this with my hand. And there we go. So..

That's not a bad cut. Especially for the parking lot of the Home Depot

But now we've got our wood small enough that we can put in just about any small car

And we can head on home and let the real woodworking begin