I am working a 20 year old house in Memphis, TN. It has rough sawn beveled 1×8 cedar siding. Some of the boards need to be replaced (about twenty). The local lumber yards all have 1×8 beveled cedar siding but the dimensions are 5/8″ thick on the butt. The original siding has 3/4″ butt. The only way to get the original siding is to order a whole unit of siding. (overkill)
I have always wanted a good bandsaw for my modest shop and this may be the opportunity. I am thinking that I would need a saw capable of resawing 7 1/2″ wide stock and then getting 1×8 S4S cedar and beveling the face side. My question is how to retain the rough sawn face, is it a function of the material or the technique to bevel the face?
Replies
I don't want to tell you this can't be done, but I doubt that you will be able to get a resawn surface off of a shop saw that looks anything like the surface on the existing siding.
Most "rough sawn" surfaces on siding are created by special machines that take an already sawn and usuallysmooth planed piece of siding and roughen the surface with a special cutter. They do this to create a consistent surface texture that would be difficult to maintain with a real saw over the tens of thousands of feet of siding that a mill creates every day.
Another thing to consider is that it is relatively easy to resaw a board that is up to perhaps 4 feet long, after that the wood gets more difficult to handle.
A few possible solutions: You could remove the siding from one side or section of the house that isn't especially visible and use the salvaged material to do the repairs or renovations on other portions of the building. You could then reside the stripped area with the new but thinner siding and no one will ever notice except you.
Another possibility would be to add a filler strip, it would only need to be 1/8" thick and 3/4" wide to the bottom edge of the thinner siding. If the new siding has slightly rounded edges on the bottom, rip or plane them off so the filler strip will form a tight seam along the edge, then round over the new outer edges with a router bit. You could attach the strips with a bit of Titebond III glue and staples so it wouldn't take long to make up the new siding, no clamping would be needed.
Hope this helps,
John White
Thanks for the advice John. I had thought of putting a filler on the back side, and hey, a new bandsaw would be able to slice up some 1/8" thin strips just fine! Should I try to use the same type material so that they contract and expand at the same rate?
You have my blessings to buy a band saw and ripping the strips on a bandsaw is safer since thin strips can get fired back wicked fast by a table saw.
For such small strips you could probably use any wood without wood movement problems, but I would still use cedar to make sure that the strips weather and take a finish the same as the rest of the siding.
Good luck with the job.
John W.
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