DIY Bandsaw Log Sled: Toy Making Dad Visits the Dungeon

Early last December, I had the pleasure of welcoming the justly famous Toy Making Dad to The Dungeon.

He brought a homebrew/DIY log sled he had cooked up, which we used successfully in hacking up some actual logs on my trusty Rikon bandsaw.

This is the back of the sled. It's essentially a vertical fence to support the log, bolted to a platform.

He drilled some holes to adjust the fence's position on the platform. There are slots on the bottom of the fence, so there's a good amount of adjustability.

If you look closely, you'll see the small 1/2 inch guide that fits right into the slot on the saw's table. That allows the mill to slide along the fence while the log is cut.

Here's the business (saw blade) side.

You can see there's also a fixed end fence to hold the log - we drove a wood screw through that end into the log to keep it in position.

There's also a clamp on the vertical part of the main fence to help keep that square.

A perfect, simple design. It worked great.

And Toy Making Dad left it with me in The Dungeon! I have some Japanese Maple logs to cut into boards and this will be perfect for the job.

The log in the pictures above is Sycamore.

It is not good (allegedly) for woodworking, but it does have beautiful grain as you can see on the left. (I wet it with mineral spirits to highlight the grain).

Here TMD is cutting a big Sycamore log into boards.

We had a 1/2 inch resaw blade on the saw and it cut this log like butter.

Look at that cut. Beautiful!

It was about this point we started to get giddy after successfully cutting the log and started to imagine all sorts of projects down the road.

And to think I was going to pony up $140 for a Carter Log Mill!

Once we knew how well the log mill worked, we got down to the business of making boards.

Toy Making Dad is going at it here.

Note the wedding ring. Sorry, girls, he's married!

Isn't this different?

This is the pinkish sawdust produced when we cut up a Chinese/Dawn Redwood, aka Metasequoia log. The log is from a Chinese Redwood tree that was in TMD's front yard when he was growing up. He's been saving the log for decades and was able to finally cut it into boards.

Here's what he says about the tree:

"It's Chinese redwood, aka "Dawn Redwood" aka Metasequoia aka 'The Valuable Tree.'

The story was that the former owner of the house had been a missionary in China and brought it back and planted it before my folks purchased the house. They bought the house in I think 1964 (maybe '62).

My folks used to be worried that our property assessment would go up since the tree was rare in the area.

Honest to God, we were told that if anyone asked us about it when we were out playing, to go and get our parents to talk to them about it since it could have been an assessor.

Hit by lightning at least twice. The second time catastrophically.

It had a perfect Christmas tree shape and in the fall turned an amazing orange and dropped its leaves.

It was really cool."

And on the right we have some beautiful Chinese Redwood boards.

TMD is planning to make Christmas ornaments from these. They should look great. The wood is really beautiful.

And watch his site for more Flippy Acrobats using these perfectly cut Red Oak parts.