Kerf's Up!

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. ”
- Michelangelo

Having previously established that carving large yokes is not fun, we next move on to Michelangelo.  Of course, we should agree that his quote is a bit fudged- using English idioms to make a point- but carving a yoke is largely similar to carving a pieta: get rid of what doesn't belong.

I favor band-sawing yokes when practical.  Although hardly traditional, the band saw gets you closer to a finished yoke faster than any other method.  Last fall, Kesi-Mardana Dasa and I worked on a 7-inch yoke and went from a blank to a nearly-finished yoke in just a few hours.

But that was a 7-inch yoke.

The current project is an 11-inch elm yoke.  Tillers' 18-inch Powermatic band saw has the power to cut the workpiece without much struggle, but maneuvering a 100 lb. timber up onto the saw and then guiding it compares to bringing the mountain to Mohammad.

John Sarge describes the process as being straightforward as long as you have one or two helpers:  One person acts as the sawyer- guiding the cut- while the other(s) supports the piece and moves with it, but doesn't steer it.  If they do, it's easy to pinch, then break, the saw blade.

How then to remove a lot of material quickly, once we've gotten the general shape for the neck seats chopped out with chainsaw, adze and broadax (see link above)?

A circular saw, set to varying depths along the length of the belly of the yoke, will waste out a lot of material in a relative hurry.  If you're careful to make the saw kerfs closely spaced (about a half-inch apart), much of the material can be broken out with a mallet, with the rest needing some chisel work.

Apply equal parts club and chisel.

The surface isn't terribly smooth once this step is done, resembling the surface of the Death Star, but we're that much closer to "freeing the angel," and are ready to move onto the next tool in the process.

That's no moon.  It's a space station. . .