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japanese quarter sawing

Started by northwoods1, March 16, 2011, 08:55:07 PM

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northwoods1

I was looking at this website yesterday of a sawmill that does custom sawing with a bandmill and they offered regular quarter sawing with the 1/3s' method and what they called "masase sawing" at $1 a board foot. I emailed them and asked what that was and the guy told me it was a Japanese form of quarter sawing that produced perfect quarter sawn lumber. I have never heard of that and I can't find a reference to it in any of my woodworking books, or if I google it, or even any information on any type of Japanese quarter sawing of lumber.
Anyone ever heard of "masase" sawing?? ???

Kcwoodbutcher

I've never heard of it but I suspect it refers to cutting wedges at a perfect ninety degrees to the growth rings. I've done this with sycamore and the results are fantastic. Every board shows almost 100% of that "snakeskin" figure. The problem with the method is it produces wedges which have to be planed before they are put in the kiln and there is a tremendous amount of waste. For all the trouble involved the wood should bring top dollar.
My job is to do everything nobody else felt like doing today

terrifictimbersllc

What would be the idea in that?  Choose to keep a perfect 90 degree face where visible in the work, and "sacrifice" the other by planing parallel to the first and losing the exact 90?
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tyb525

I'd guess it mean rotating the pie shaped piece for every cut. This would produce boards, with wedges as waste.
LT10G10, Stihl 038 Magnum, many woodworking tools. Currently a farm service applicator, trying to find time to saw!

Kcwoodbutcher

It's a pain to do because I have to cut off the bottom of the pie piece. I use wedges between the pie and the mill bunks to rotate the piece to get the exact 90 degrees.  Then you flip the pie to the other face and do the same thing until you split the last piece.
My job is to do everything nobody else felt like doing today

northwoods1

Quote from: Kcwoodbutcher on March 17, 2011, 02:08:59 AM
It's a pain to do because I have to cut off the bottom of the pie piece. I use wedges between the pie and the mill bunks to rotate the piece to get the exact 90 degrees.  Then you flip the pie to the other face and do the same thing until you split the last piece.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I was working and I had come to the conclusion that the only way you could possibly get the maximum amount of perfectly 1/4 sawn out of a log is to do just that, cut very narrow pie shaped wedges out of it and then run them through the planer. Then I was trying to figure out why a person would want to do that considering the difficulty and amount of waste involved. I guess I can understand why they might do it in Japan because historically quality wood for woodworking is a difficult to obtain resource compared to here. But even so, it seems that there is so much waste with that method. The wood close to the heart would have to be discarded and a lot would be eliminated in planing the wedges to square.
Since wood is a much more easily obtainable commodity here it doesn't seem like that method would really make sense to utilize as you could simply use the 1/3s' method, for example, and pick out the perfectly quartered material and still be able to utilize the rest of the log. You would just simply need to saw more logs to get the same amount of 1/4 sawn as you would get from 1 log using the "masase" method :)
Come to think about it, when you rive a log up by hand for use in woodworking as it would have been done in traditional forms of woodworking, that is exactly what you are doing. You split the log up into 1/4s and 1/8ths and then work the wedges down into boards. A lot of waste but that is what would have been done.



Magicman

You have waste whenever you quartersaw.  It's just a matter of when and where you want it to occur.  That method does produce all of the boards being the same width, instead of various widths.
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northwoods1

Quote from: Magicman on March 17, 2011, 09:55:54 AM
You have waste whenever you quartersaw.  It's just a matter of when and where you want it to occur.  That method does produce all of the boards being the same width, instead of various widths.

Well, yes. But the most important things that differentiates this Japanese technique (and I am not so sure you can really call it Japanese because like I mentioned this is the way any traditional woodworker in a historical context would have went about producing boards for use through riving) is it maximizes the amount of perfectly quartersawn lumber from any single log.
All the other common ways that are utilized by most sawmillers are more of a balance between time involved and amount of quarter sawed produced but there is much less waste in the other methods because you are still making lumber but it might not be perfectly quarter sawed.
Think I will stick with the 1/3s' method that seems to be the fastest and easiest way without to much waste.

rph816

That's very common technique for high end musical instrument makers, particularly for sound boards.  Lots of waste, but very high value product, probably not something to do with everyday logs.

Ryan

northwoods1

Quote from: rph816 on March 17, 2011, 12:16:08 PM
That's very common technique for high end musical instrument makers, particularly for sound boards.  Lots of waste, but very high value product, probably not something to do with everyday logs.

Ryan


I think that is a good point, I can see how that would be a preferred way if doing it if you have a high quality log that you really need to maximize the amount of material from which had to be perfectly 1/4 sawn. I've looked at a lot of soundboards on guitars and am amazed at how on the high end ones the wood is so perfectly quartered. It makes sense how a person would go through the trouble of using a technique like that when you are producing a very high end $$ product like that.

Tom

QuoteAnyone ever heard of "masase" sawing?? Can ya explain dat one to me?

The fellows have explained what the process has to be already.  Assigning it a fancy name or a technique performed by a "superior" culture is just marketing hype.

Have you ever seen a log  cut through and through without squaring and then put back together with stickers, just like it came apart and tied up into a bundle?   Well, that used to carry a name around here of a Norwegian-sawed log or Swedish, or Denmark.  Pick a name, whatever seems to provide enough mystique to help it to sell.  :D   Actually, it is just an old way of making boards that allowed the user to bookmatch and have a variety of grain orientations from the same tree.  The purchaser didn't buy boards, he bought sawed logs.  The log was put on his wagon and he took it home.

Quarter-sawing has been done for many years, by everybody.  To break a log up radially and make boards, insures the most "vertical grain" and also the most waste.  Somebody just thought that "Masase" sounded cool.   That's my opinion.   ;D


beenthere

A well written article in the recent Sawmill&Woodlot mag (March issue) on producing quarter sawn lumber.  Includes pics and log end layouts of the variety of ways. Just came today.
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Kcwoodbutcher

That's a good point Tom, I'll put that name on the lumber and charge a buck more a board foot.
My job is to do everything nobody else felt like doing today

ARKANSAWYER

  There is a far superior method of quarter sawing that produces only the finest product from each log.  It is older then the Ozark Mountains and since the invention of sawmills it has become the standard that all others are judged by.  It is a system technique that takes years to master and many who attempt never gain the mastery of the art form of quarter sawn lumber.  It is important to note that not all who operate sawmills are ever in harmony with the wood as nature intended for true balance to be achieved in the sawing arts.  You must be one with the wood and in tune with nature around you for the true release of the beauty with in the log.





  This is what can be achieved with the ARKY technique if you can master your inner sawyer and be one with the creation of GOD.
ARKANSAWYER

Tom


tyb525

A much more efficient variation of the "Japanese" method would be to square the board before it comes off the mill, to avoid having to plane it square.
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ATLGA

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mad murdock

ARKY, we're not worthy! We're not worthy!.  (that is a fine looking piece of wood in your pic BTW!)You guys are too funny. :D  Master, can you teach me the ways of the ARKY?  I want to become a master as well :)
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northwoods1

Quote from: mad murdock on March 17, 2011, 02:07:01 PM
ARKY, we're not worthy! We're not worthy!.  (that is a fine looking piece of wood in your pic BTW!)You guys are too funny. :D  Master, can you teach me the ways of the ARKY?  I want to become a master as well :)

Me too, I am going to change my username to grasshopper and will be eagerly awaiting your guidance :D :D

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Dan_Shade

The sawmill and woodlot article doesn't include my method of quartersawing.

i make a hexagon, then cut into quarters, then cut the pith off, turn that face perpendicular to the saw blade to start making boards.

I find it fastest, and it yields some pretty good figured boards

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ARKANSAWYER


  Yes you need boots for this. ;D  With somethings it is all in the marketing. (BS)  Unless  you build with wedges you can not have "true" qsawn faces on both sides of the board.  If you rive a board from a log it will have true as you can have but when you plane off the face to flatten it they you will lose what you gained. 
The trick to qsawing is to learn to read a log and saw parallel to the pith.  Do not be afraid to make tapered boards from end to end.  On most logs you can get two boards with a face that has a face each that is true qsawn form each half and pie or you can saw so that three boards have "pert near" true qsawn faces.  It  is just the way the logs grow.



   

  This photo show taking the three boards out of the middle.  The middle board and the board above and below will have "pert near" true qsawn faces.  If we had just split the log right down the middle the the board above and below the cut would have true qsawn faces.  I have a photo of what  you are looking for on the end of the log but it is on the computer at the mill and I will upload it when I get a chance.
ARKANSAWYER

Brucer

"masase" will be a generic Japanese word that simply refers to the way a log is cut. It will not translate directly into "quartersawing" because they would have used their own terminology.

Translating Japanese that's spelled with roman letters is tough because it's purely phonetic. The best match I can find for the first two syllables is:
ma => "cross".
sa => "divide".

The last syllable is a little difficult because A) it may be misspelled, and B) if it's spelled correctly then it's one of the less common Japanese symbols (i.e. the one's that aren't in my dictionary).

Anyway, the bottom line is that in Japan it would have no more significance than the way we refer to something as "quartersawn".
Bruce    LT40HDG28 bandsaw
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."

scsmith42

Quote from: ARKANSAWYER on March 17, 2011, 01:50:22 PM
  There is a far superior method of quarter sawing that produces only the finest product from each log.  It is older then the Ozark Mountains and since the invention of sawmills it has become the standard that all others are judged by.  It is a system technique that takes years to master and many who attempt never gain the mastery of the art form of quarter sawn lumber.  It is important to note that not all who operate sawmills are ever in harmony with the wood as nature intended for true balance to be achieved in the sawing arts.  You must be one with the wood and in tune with nature around you for the true release of the beauty with in the log.





  This is what can be achieved with the ARKY technique if you can master your inner sawyer and be one with the creation of GOD.



Amen Bro!

Arky, I hope that you will forgive me, but seeing as I grew up in Texas I just had to "see your 10 and raise you by 6"...  Here is some 16" QSRO that I milled last year. 

Hmm... come to think of it on the day that I milled this I think that I started off that morning by reading some of your posts.... perhaps some of the ARKY Technique and Inner Sawyer was being channeled to me via the FF!  ;)



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