We recently bought a new resaw, which we use to process beams into reclaimed pitch pine flooring, and above is a picture of our first cut off the new machine (our finished floorboards don’t have these big holes - this was just a practice piece!).
We’re really happy with the new machine - we don’t use it to make any of the new redwood pine flooring, but it’s an essential piece of equipment for making our reclaimed flooring and we couldn’t be happier with our new upgrade!
There are a lot of issues encountered when cutting pitch pine floorboards and some of them are very difficult to overcome. Nails are the obvious one but a good supply of metal detectors help reduce the number that get through to the resaw. When you cut a nail it ruins your blade instantly which can get expensive! Not only are the beams dense and hard they have a huge amount of sticky resin which binds to the blade and causes a lot of friction. This makes them blade wander and not cut straight which doesn’t produce good pitch pine floorboards. To overcome this you need a lubricant that is pumped onto the blade to clean off the resin and make the blade slip through the pitch pine beams with ease.