Sharpening a saw really helps!

Yes yes, I know. No apologies about neglecting my blog. I am just one of these victims of Instagram (for a link, look above). But a blog is a better place to pause a bit longer on certain subjects. Anyway, after doing loads of jobs around the house, upgrading the entrance of the garage, lots of painting etc, I am back to normal woodworking. The bathroom cabinet needs to be build.

For the bottom boards of this cabinet I still had some leftover wallnut from the dining room table project. It's mostly sap wood, but perfectly suitable for something like this. One problem though, it still was one massive piece about 5 cm thick. Crosscutting in smaller sections made it more managable.

My humble workshop friends, the planer and tablesaw, helped to square these boards. Then I  used the tablesaw to rip into the board's edges as far as the blade allowed. 6 cm from both sides.

That left me with 12 cm in the middle to cut away with my trusty 4 1/2 tpi rip saw. A job I have been avoiding for quite some time allready.

Well, in the end it was all half as bad. It's hard work, but goes relatively quickly. But, as the title sais, it really helps to sharpen your saw first! I did the first board without resharpening the saw. It has been used quite a lot but still didn't seem too bad. It took me almost 20 minutes.

Then I decided to give the saw a quick once-over. A light jointing, then filing the teeth until they were razor sharp again.

The next board went quite a bit quicker. I cut the time in two, only 10 minutes for a 54 cm long, 12 cm deep resaw in wallnut! Not bad.

The last board is a little narrower and took even less time of course. So, all in all, in less then two hour I was through the entire stack, including extended tea breaks and sharpening the saw. I do feel my arms though!

A board split open and the sawdust on the workbench

And all the boards together, ready for further processing.