The rift sawn rip cuts are perpendicular to the center of the log In

woodworking Woodworking is the skill of making items from wood, and includes cabinet making (cabinetry and furniture), wood carving, woodworking joints, joinery, carpentry, and woodturning. History Along with Rock (geology), stone, clay and animal parts, ...

, a rip-cut is a type of cut that severs or divides a piece of wood parallel to the

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...

. The other typical type of cut is a ''cross-cut'', a cut perpendicular to the grain. Unlike cross-cutting, which shears the wood fibers, a rip saw works more like a series of

chisel A chisel is a tool with a characteristically shaped cutting edge (such that wood chisels have lent part of their name to a particular grind) of blade on its end, for carving or cutting a hard material such as wood, stone, or metal by hand, stru ...

s, lifting off small splinters of wood. The nature of the wood grain requires the shape of the saw teeth to be different thus the need for both rip saws and

crosscut saw A crosscut saw (thwart saw) is any saw designed for cutting wood perpendicular to (across) the wood grain. Crosscut saws may be small or large, with small teeth close together for fine work like woodworking or large for coarse work like log b ...

s; however some circular saw blades are ''combination blades'' and can make both types of cuts. A rip cut is the fundamental type of cut made at a

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

Definitions

''Rip cut'' comes from ''rip'': to split or saw timber in the direction of the grain, and ''cut'': to divide with a sharp-edged instrument."Rip v. 2." def. 2.a., "cut v." def. 7.a., "rive v.1." def. 4 and "kerf" def 2.a. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) © Oxford University Press 2009 Wood may also be

split Split(s) or The Split may refer to: Places * Split, Croatia, the largest coastal city in Croatia * Split Island, Canada, an island in the Hudson Bay * Split Island, Falkland Islands * Split Island, Fiji, better known as Hạfliua Arts, enterta ...

along the grain (riven), but the split will follow the grain and usually not be flat.

Knots A knot is a fastening in rope or interwoven lines. Knot may also refer to: Places * Knot, Nancowry, a village in India Archaeology * Knot of Isis (tyet), symbol of welfare/life. * Minoan snake goddess figurines#Sacral knot Arts, entertainme ...

also prevent riving thus the need for rip cuts. A ''kerf'' is the opening in the wood made by the saw.

Handsaws

Types of

hand saw In woodworking and carpentry, hand saws, also known as "panel saws", are used to cut pieces of wood into different shapes. This is usually done in order to join the pieces together and carve a wooden object. They usually operate by having a ser ...

s used to make rip cuts are rip saws,

frame saw A frame saw or sash saw is a type of saw which consists of a relatively narrow and flexible blade held under tension within a (generally wooden) rectangular frame (also called a sash or gate). They are used for cutting wood or stone. The blade ...

s some of which are

whipsaw A whipsaw or pitsaw was originally a type of saw used in a saw pit, and consisted of a narrow blade held rigid by a frame and called a frame saw or sash saw (see illustrations). This evolved into a straight, stiff blade without a frame, up to 1 ...

s, and veneer saws.

Power saws

Rip cuts are commonly made with a

table saw A table saw (also known as a sawbench or bench saw in England) is a woodworking tool, consisting of a circular saw blade, mounted on an arbor, that is driven by an electric motor (either directly, by belt, or by gears). The blade protrudes t ...

, but other types of power saws can also be used, including a

radial arm saw A radial arm saw is a cutting machine consisting of a circular saw mounted on a sliding horizontal arm. Invented by Raymond DeWalt in 1922, the radial arm saw was the primary tool used for cutting long pieces of stock to length until the introdu ...

band saw A bandsaw (also written band saw) is a power saw with a long, sharp blade consisting of a continuous band of toothed metal stretched between two or more wheels to cut material. They are used principally in woodworking, metalworking, and lumb ...

, and hand held circular saw. In sawmills the

head saw A head saw, framesaw, gang saw or head rig is the saw that makes the initial cuts in a log at a sawmill, turning a log into cants, or planks of wood. History The original powered head saw was composed of long, narrow blades that used an up-and-d ...

is the first rip-saw a log goes through, which is sometimes a gang-saw, and then the cants may be resawn using other saws and then edged in an

edger An edge trimmer or lawn edger is a garden tool, either manual or motorised, to form distinct boundaries between a lawn, typically consisting of a grass, or other soft botanical ground cover, and another ground surface feature such as a paved, con ...

and sometimes cut to length by a

. Also, smaller

portable sawmill Portable sawmills are sawmills small enough to be moved easily and set up in the field. They have existed for over 100 years but grew in popularity in the United States starting in the 1970s, when the 1973 oil crisis and the back-to-the-land movemen ...

s and

chainsaw mill A chainsaw mill or PortaMill or Alaskan mill or Alaskan sawmill or Logosol sawmill is a type of sawmill incorporating a chainsaw, that is used by one or two operators to mill logs into lumber for use in furniture, construction and other uses. ...

s use rip-cuts to produce lumber. Each time a piece of wood is rip cut it takes time and the kerf material turns into sawdust and loses value so the number and width of each rip cut influence the economics of the operation: This gives band saws an advantage over circular saws and chainsaws.

Types of cuts

The types of rip-cuts influence the quality of the lumber. Plain-sawn is the most common type of cut where a log is repeatedly run through a saw and much of the lumber has

wood grain Wood grain is the longitudinal arrangement of wood fibers or the pattern resulting from such an arrangement. Definition and meanings R. Bruce Hoadley wrote that ''grain'' is a "confusingly versatile term" with numerous different uses, including ...

nearly parallel to the width of the boards.

Quarter sawn Quarter sawing or quartersawing is a woodworking process that produces quarter-sawn or quarter-cut boards in the rip cutting of logs into lumber. The resulting lumber can also be called ''radially-sawn'' or simply ''quartered''. There is widesp ...

and rift-sawn wood is more time consuming and wasteful to produce but is of higher quality. As a general rule, tools which work well for rip cutting do not work well for crosscutting. Most woodworkers thus have a table saw, which is used for rip cutting, and a separate chop or

miter saw A miter saw or mitre saw is a saw used to make accurate crosscuts and miters in a workpiece by positioning a mounted blade onto a board. A miter saw in its earliest form was composed of a back saw in a miter box, but in modern implementatio ...

, which is used for crosscutting. Crosscut power-saws should never be used for ''ripping'' a board because it is very dangerous.

Circular saw A circular saw is a power-saw using a toothed or abrasive disc or blade to cut different materials using a rotary motion spinning around an arbor. A hole saw and ring saw also use a rotary motion but are different from a circular saw. ''Cir ...

blades designed for rip cutting have a smaller number of larger teeth than similar blades designed for cross cutting. There are combination blades for table saws that can be used for ripping and cross cutting but should not be used for non through cuts such as dados and

rabbet A rabbet (American English) or rebate (British English) is a recess or groove cut into the edge of a piece of machinable material, usually wood. When viewed in cross-section, a rabbet is two-sided and open to the edge or end of the surface in ...

s. If you use a radial arm saw to rip you need a blade with a negative hook angle for the teeth to keep the saw from lifting the board off the saw and kicking back.

References

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