BuilderBill Posted September 2, 2010 Report Share Posted September 2, 2010 Been a busy week hauling lumber and pushing it through the Laguna.... A month or so ago, I bid a job with roughsawn cedar trusses with radius wings. I don't own a bandsaw so I padded the material/millwork quote a little (well, to be honest, maybe just a tad more than a little ) hoping I could mostly pay for a Delta or Powermatic 13. Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and all that, I got the job! Did some web research and ended up ordering the Laguna 1414 SUV, the mobility kit (a must, considering the miserable space I call a shop), the Driftmaster fence and a handfull of blades. Recruited a buddy who owes me bigtime to help unload and transport on delivery day, ordered an 800 lb. hand truck from Amazon (gotta love Amazon Prime!) and waited for delivery. Buddy came over, helped me get the thing off the pallet and shipping platform (at some point in the process he mentioned something about monkeys procreating with footballs and I couldn't help but agree...) and we finally managed to get all 380-lb-worth of saw into BuilderBill's Basement/Garage/Workshop/Storage Facility. I managed to get it mostly assembled that night, the next day mounted the 1/2-3TPI Silicon blade and finished the setup. Grabbed a 4x10 chunk of (mostly) air-dried EWP I had lying around, ripped an edge and stood it up. Took a quick cleanup cut, bumped the fence and proceeded to slice off a 3/64 slab of veneer plus or minus a few thou edge-to edge. OK, this one might be a keeper...... Skip a week, I played around with the saw a little and added a wall-mount DC from Rockler... Last Friday I went to the lumber yard and tortured the plastic with a $2400 cedar order. Back Monday to pick the material for cutting, a 4x8x8, three 4x10 tens, and three 4x12 eights and off to the shop, remainder delivered to the jobsite. Well just Damn, when did cedar get so expensive? . I'd already drawn the trusses in AutoCad so it was a simple matter of printing them out full-size on the roll printer and taping them to some foamcore and trimming them for patterns. Traced them out on the stock, hacked it into manageable pieces with the HuskyVarmint, hauled them inside and I was ready to go. A couple of hours later, I had 16 truss wings and cornice brackets stacked in the 4Runner and the whole basement stank to high Heaven! Up until now I'd always loved the smell of fresh-cut cedar but there can always be too much of a good thing..... Tuesday at the job, the exterior stuff went well, we moved to the interior and I found out I can't eyeball the difference between a 12/12 vault and a 14-12 when there's a big stone chimney in the middle... So it's off to the lumberyard in a rush(they waited for me after 5:00) for three more 4x12 12' and tortured the plastic some more... Drive an hour to get home, re-draw on the computer, make another pattern, chainsaw blanks, etc...... By 8:30 I had 6 more finished pieces and was mixing a drink (and happy for the chance). Took them up to the job and they installed w/o a hitch. To sum it up, I'm pretty well pleased with the Laguna, it did what it had to do when I needed. My main complaint is that the 3-TPI blade doesn't cut rough enough(don't hear that often, do you?) to match the finish on the RS beams. This customer didn't notice, but I'm going to order a couple of their 1"-1.3TPI blades just to make sure I don't wind up on a scaffold with a wire brush on the next job. All in all, I'd say I'm very pleased with the saw's quality and performance and consider it well worth the cost. I have a couple of minor things I've noticed that could be improved on, I'll post that and some photos in a follow-up. But... I'm tired and I wanna eat a handful of ibuprofen and go to bed... Best, Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulMarcel Posted September 2, 2010 Report Share Posted September 2, 2010 Nihou, Buirder Bob, Sounds like it was a fun project. I'd have volunteered to help with the tool move if I could hang out to see some of that in action. 'cept the monkey part. Glad it all worked out well. Definitely want photos of the result. I'm also curious what you use to print the full-size CAD picture. We had a huge printer at my previous company (was used one, to print a test directory listing ), but that puppy was $4k. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nateswoodworks Posted September 2, 2010 Report Share Posted September 2, 2010 Sounds like you had fun breaking in the new saw, now just wondering how much a 1.3TPI resembles a sharks mouth!! Nate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuilderBill Posted September 2, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2010 Nihou, Buirder Bob, Sounds like it was a fun project. I'd have volunteered to help with the tool move if I could hang out to see some of that in action. 'cept the monkey part. Glad it all worked out well. Definitely want photos of the result. I'm also curious what you use to print the full-size CAD picture. We had a huge printer at my previous company (was used one, to print a test directory listing ), but that puppy was $4k. Going back to the job today for photos, no subs working inside and it's fairly-well cleaned up for a jobsite. PM, I didn't mean to give the impression that I printed the whole truss, I only printed the radiused arms and they were all cut from 4x12, so the max height was OK for my 17" Epson 4800. I used a 17" roll of plain paper I got from the local blueprint supplier and the longest pattern was 44". I can print banners on the printer, not sure max length but it's 'way up there. It was a fun project, although making emergency runs to the yard for 4x12's that came out of my pocket wasn't the greatest experience... Nonetheless, I'll still come out ahead on the job with almost enough to pay for the saw. Now I just have to find some more like this one.... Nate, the 1.3 blade looks like this: Laguna bandsaw blade Best, gotta run.... Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuilderBill Posted September 3, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2010 Didn't get by today for photos, spent the morning catching up on paperwork and trying to clean the cedar stink out of the 4Runner, the rest of the day was the requisite driving around, drinking coffee, talking on the phone and peeing on fires.... Anyway, here are the shop drawings: Some photos of the work in progress: HuskyVarmint vs. 4x12: Start small, work your way up: The beginning of a Vermont yard-cart overfull with scrap: and a shop shot with the improvised outfeed table: This is kind of like my housed-stringer stair adventure, visible in the third photo: Good to look back on, glad I did it, but not particularly a lot of fun and a heckuva lot of work while it was all going on. At least this time I got paid for the experience. And that's a Very Good Thing! " And to all a good night!" Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuilderBill Posted September 11, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 11, 2010 Finally, some photos of the almost-finished product... The garage gable: The entry gable: The entry porch work: The arches didn't turn out to be exactly a true radius, I had cut them for the distance between the columns the GC gave me and then he decided to squeeze it down and didn't want to pay for new millwork. So we just trimmed the ends a couple of inches and they're slightly peaked, not something the average guy would notice but enough to PMO a little. And the interior trusses: We were back yesterday to install the arch-top windows in the gables and the cedar shakes. Stone crew had just arrived to build the bases for the porch columns. Didn't have time today to go by and take some photos, but the customer's tickled to death with the work and that means the GC's happy. Happy customers and GCs are a Really Very Good Thing, means I get paid with no hassles and maybe some more business. Best, Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulMarcel Posted September 11, 2010 Report Share Posted September 11, 2010 Really really nice, Bill. Like Megan Fox, the curves really add to it. Perhaps you'll get time off for fishing... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmykx250 Posted September 11, 2010 Report Share Posted September 11, 2010 Nice work! Looks really nice both on the inside and out! I noticed you attached the horizontal members to the existing joists. Did you just sister them to one roof joist @ each end? Just curious. My great room looks identical only i have a 4 12 pitch not a 6 12. That gave me some good ideas! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BuilderBill Posted September 12, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 12, 2010 Thanks, guys, for the comments. Jimmy, they're just through-bolted to a single rafter on each end. Normally, I'd sister them between a pair but the GC and customer didn't want to tear out any more drywall than they had to and the cedar is relatively light. They're really just decorative, they're almost too high up to act as any kind of structural member. Fall is coming and it's almost time to start thinking about fishing again. Nice thing about working where I do, I can just throw a rod, vest and waders in the back of the truck and sneak off a couple of afternoons a week.... That's what voice mail is for, right? Best, Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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