Long cut on weird piece of lumber

[thisisjohnbrown]

Hello all! This is my first time in the WW forum, but I have been watching the videos on Youtube for a long time. I really gathered my appreciation for wood from Marc.

The reason I am here is I have something I want to do but don't know how to do it. I want to take a piece of wood that is, say, 2'x1.5' and 3" thick and cut it in half so that I can hollow it out and basically turn it into a shallow box. Because of the terrific edges, I want the cut to be as thin as possible so that I can put the pieces back together and have it be barely noticeable.

The long edges will be live edges, so getting a steady cut will be difficult enough, but I don't know how to even go about cutting the piece if it were perfectly square.

Any direction/instruction/advice/thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I look forward to being on this forum for a long time.

Thanks!

[PurpLev]

sounds like a bandsaw cut to me.

If the block of wood was squared 3 sides you could ride one side against a rip fence through the blade. if it's not s3s, you could still do the same cut, but you'll have to setup some sort of a sled to secure your raw wood to that will act as the flat surface to ride against the rip fence, or in the miter slot (to keep the cut straight).

you forgot to mention what tools are available for you to use? if you don't have a bandsaw with enough resawing capacity for your box - then obviously this won't work for you.

[Lawrence Brown]

As PurpLev said, you're best bet is to clamp the whole thing to something that you can run through whatever equipment you have, like a crosscut sled on a table saw. Even just somehow securing it to a straight board that's wider than what you're cutting and then running the edge of the board against the rip fence of the table saw would work. If you don't have any of the larger power tools, then the other way would be to somehow clamp a straightedge to the wood as a guide and run something like a circular saw across it.

[Dave F]

I'm a bit unclear as to which demension you want to cut. From what you described it sounds like you desire to have two pieces 2' x 1.5' x 1.5".... If that's the case you will probably need ro resaw the piece on a bandsaw with a wide blade and resaw fence. Is that what you're shooting for? To make a box from that, I'd then use a core box bit in a router to hollow the interiors.

With the same setup you could cut a slimer slab off the "top" to form your lid, then just rout one side to hollow the chamber.