Resawn Ash

[jackellis]

I'm using shop projects as an opportunity to hone my skills and experiment, which is why I'm making the false fronts for some shop drawers out of ash. I have a bunch that I acquired for relatively little money.

Rather than using full thickness boards for the false fronts, I'm resawing plain sawn ash boards to 1/4" - essentially thick veneer. When I do, the stuff cups and causes the bandsaw blade to bind, so much so that it takes a lot of feed pressure and a many minutes to saw through a 7" wide by 23" long board.

Is this to be expected generally, or is it just this species, or... The ash is pretty well seasoned. My shop is in an unheated garage so the humidity there should be about the same as the humidity outside, which has been fluctuating a bit in our rainy season.

[LCHIEN]

my first reaction was that I'm questioning if the ash is really warping and causing the binding or whether the equipment is the issue... insufficient power, wrong blade type, worn blade, etc can all cause difficulty resawing when the wood is 7" thick.

If the ash was cheap, the resawing difficult, then maybe you should just use it full thickness.

just random thoughts. You probably need a 1 HP bare minimum, 1.5 HP more likely, and a good 1/2" resaw blade like a HIghland woodslicer.

[Uncle Cracker]

Ash does store a lot of energy. This is one reason it has long been used for baseball bats. It is not uncommon to see ash distort after cutting. Re-sawing often will benefit from the use of some shims behind the blade, as well as a blade a step or two narrower than some of those big re-saw blades. You might also have too many teeth on the blade, or teeth with too much set. One with a tooth count of 4tpi would be plenty.