Archway Construction Begins

For the past few weeks we have worked on milling the wood. We have been in the shop at Evergreen cutting the old 12x6s down to size using the band saw. The band saw we were using we pretty much pushed to capacity trying to mill the enormous beams. We tried a couple different strategies to get straight cuts, including using gates and chalk-lines. We struggled with the blade bending and pushing the wood off course. Eventually we tried scoring the cut lines with a skill saw before running the beams through the band saw. Using the scores as our guides we made the long cuts with greater ease.

From the smaller pieces we shaped the beams and wings for our archway using electric handsaws. We measured the angles we needed for the wings, created a gate by clamping a square metal rod to the wood, and once again scored with a skill saw. Then we used a saws-all to expand the cut through the wood. With the same process and tools we trimmed the ends to the correct length.

5 of the 14 wings

Before long, we had 14 wings cut and ready to be planed and smoothed.