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dog earing fence boards

Started by hackberry jake, May 28, 2012, 03:11:54 PM

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hackberry jake

I've been sawing out fence boards. They are 5.5" wide and there will be a .5" gap between boards so there will be two boards a foot. 400' of fence means 800 boards. Has anyone built a jig for dog earing. I thought about the miter saw option, but am thinking about setting up a couple skill saws and stacking a bunch of boards on edge. One saw will cut off the top and one for the bottom. might even have a couple on the other side to cut the bottom side flat and all boards will be the same length. With this likley being a one time deal, I might be better off just suffering through it with the miter saw. One board at a time.
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Cedarman

We use 3 chop saws set 4' apart to make 4' and 8' by being able to chop each end.  For 6' we use the end saw to trim then scoot the boards down to a solid stop then make the cut with the middle saw.  This gets the boards to length.  You could do this with one saw, cutting the ends, then moving the boards down to a solid stop , then cutting again.
We usually do 2 boards at a time.
For dog earing we make the saw at 45 degrees.  We use clamps to put a 2x4  so that when you put the boards to dog ear next to them you can make your cut. Flip boards over and chop one more time.  The boards are sticking out perpendicular to the saw stand so that boards of slightly different widths will have same amount dog eared off.
2 people can do over 300 boards per hour, sometimes 400.
I am in the pink when sawing cedar.

ellmoe

   I've tried several different ways to dog-ear pickets. What we now do is the simplest, cheapest way I have found. It allows for variation in widths and almost no up-front cost. We use a cheap contactors table saw, remove the throat plate and then scratch a 45degree angle on the table. Set the fence about a 3/4 of an inch (vary it to change size of DE) and thrust the board against the fence following the 45 degree scratch. With a little practice you can DE about as fast as you can pick up a board. We DE before feeding a resaw (we split 1" cull boards into 1/2" pickets) and the man feeding a the resaw and DEing easily stays ahead of the tailer After awhile it is not necessary to even look at the "cheater line". It sure works better for us than a miter saw.

Mark
Thirty plus years in the sawmill/millwork business. A sore back and arthritic fingers to prove it!

Al_Smith

I've certainly have never done 800 of them .I did however probabley make 50 once .Set the angle square on a table saw  just right and ran the edge to the fence  .Get the angle right and just flip the board .They'll all come out exactly the same .Let me modify that a bit .Make a mark on the table with a pencil on the flip and they'll all come out the same.

You know though as odd as it seems you can usually purchase dog ears out of treated lumber cheaper than  you can buy the stock to make them .

hackberry jake

Yeah, lowes has pine for $2.15 a board, with tax probably closer to $2.30. That's $1840 for just the boards and nothing else. I won't have near that much in it, but I'm not figuring labor. My brother has been helping. We only work on it maybe two days a month for 6 hrs a day. It's good bonding time and we enjoy working with each other. I don't think I'll be going into business making eastern red cedar fence any time soon. Plus, who wants treated pine when you can have erc?
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EZ Boardwalk Jr. With 20hp Honda, 25' of track, and homemade setworks. 32x18 sawshed. 24x40 insulated shop. 30hp kubota with fel. 1978 Massey ferguson 230.

WDH

I have found the quality of the treated fence pickets at the big box stores to be very poor.  You have to figure in a waste factor, maybe even 20 to 25% unless you want to go through all that work and put crappy boards on the fence.
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Al_Smith

Yeah pre mades you about have to sort them out before you buy them .

They aren't a full 3/4" thick ,maybe 5/8" or so .They might be resaws from drop ends of 2 by 6's or some such thing .Planed on one side ,rough sawn on the other .

I think these things are just another creative method to make a salable product such as landscaping  timbers and round fence post .These are just the centers of plywood veneer logs .Probabley at one time either chipped or just burned .

Mooseherder

Putting dog ears on the boards was my job at a Mill when I was a kid.
It was almost 40 years ago but I'm pretty sure it would be easy to set up with some ingenuity.  The one I operated wasn't that big.  Probably the size of a table saw.  The board was fed in between the guides in the center of the table.
When the top of the board hit the switch in the center, two knives, one from the left and from the right side would take the ears off.  It was a very fast system but I don't remember if it was hydraulic or air operated. ::)
I own the edger from that old mill.  Wish I had the dog ear machine also.

Larry

In a Amish shop I saw where they had hooked up a hydraulic cylinder to operate a big RAS.  They were crosscutting 4 X 4's.  It worked fine for that operation but I suppose it would be a bit slow for dog ears.  I wonder it one could hook up a pneumatic cylinder operated by a foot switch to cut the ears?
Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

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Holmes

 I helped a friend years ago do a 300' fence. When he got tired of cutting the dog ears with his skil saw we set them up 12 to 15 high marked the ear on the top board with 1 vertical line down the end of the boards and nipped them off with a sharp chain saw. The vertical line was to keep the saw on the right path, they were clamped by him sitting on them and holding them in place.
Think like a farmer.

metalspinner

Rather than handling each board,I'm wondering if sawing the dogears on the cant with a circular saw would make things a little quicker?  You would still be left with the side boards and edgings to handle independently, though.
I do what the little voices in my wife's head tell me to do.

Al_Smith

It doesn't take that long on a table saw once you get a system set up .

grweldon

I would suggest, as others, to cut them with a skilsaw, but use a clamp-on plywood guide as a template.  Clamp the guide on square to the length, run the base of the saw down one 45 deg. angle, then do the other and unclamp the template.  Figure about 1 minute to do 4-6 boards at once?  There may be more productive ways, but other than the chainsaw, this is the most down & dirty method...
My three favorite documents: The Holy Bible, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States.

Cypressstump

Quote from: metalspinner on May 30, 2012, 08:43:42 AM
Rather than handling each board,I'm wondering if sawing the dogears on the cant with a circular saw would make things a little quicker?  You would still be left with the side boards and edgings to handle independently, though.

I think we have a winner here !  Two cuts per a cant cut to proper width,,, good idea.
Stump

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Lucman

My first thought would be to use my mill, couple 6 or 8ft pipe clamps, clamp as many together as I could, lean them on the sawmill and whack the bunch, flip them and repeat, never tried it, but seems simple enough.

Joe
Wood-Mizer LT-40
Mesick, Michigan

TimGA

Just cut 1000 I have a long miter table bring up 4 at a time cut bottom square, slide down to a stop cut square at 6 ft, slide stack back toward saw place 1 inch sticker in front of stop slide stack back, put saw at 45 degee cut off angle, flip stack cut again. Easy 300 plus an hr with 2 people. Did it for my daughter and son in law. Like you said we do some of this for bonding time had lots of laughs. Good luck, ours was pine yours will beautiful in ceder.  Tim 
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