[GSBN] Straw Bale Cutting Tool - Any Ideas

[Rene Dalmeijer]

I know Ellen Stoffer successfully used a large bandsaw to cut bales to size for prefab straw bale elements. It was a huge bandsaw. The bandsaw  option was chosen here because wood mizers are rare in the Netherlands. I guess though that a wood mizer style bandsaw works even better because you don’t have to move the bales, instead the saw moves and as Chris says you can cut multiple bales depending on the base of wood mizer. 

Basking in the reclaimed swamp at the mouth of the Rhine with very few cut up bales
Rene Dalmeijer

> On Sep 13, 2017, at 18:03, Derek Roff <derek at unm.edu> wrote:
> 
> When we built the demonstration Eco-House at the US Botanical Garden in Washington, DC, we used Sam Droege’s Wood Mizer bandsaw lumber mill.  It’s similar to the one shown in Chris’s pictures.  It worked very well, for both sizing bales and getting a smoother surface on the “cut side” of the bales, which makes plastering easier.  
> 
> The cut side of bales from many suppliers has ripples that are pretty deep.  If I owned a bandsaw mill, I would consider trimming all the bales with an uneven cut side, so that the plaster would end up with a much more even thickness.  
> 
> Derek
> 
> Derek Roff
> derek at unm.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Sep 13, 2017, at 9:32 AM, Chris Magwood <chris at endeavourcentre.org> wrote:
>> 
>> A photo, to elaborate...
>> 
>> On 2017-09-13 11:20 AM, David Arkin, AIA wrote:
>>> Hello Global Straw Balers:
>>> 
>>> CASBA has a workshop coming up, fitting bales between studs in a large three-story office building.  While many of the stud bays are 22 1/2” wide, set to easily fit 23” wide bales on end, many other bays are of lesser dimensions, requiring the ripping of the bales to a narrower width.  
>>> 
>>> We’ve successfully used electric chain saws to rip an occasional bale during bale-raisings, but the scale of this project suggests a better tool for this task.  One solution we’ve been mulling is a bandsaw (pic attached, covers off).  Thoughts on the pros & cons of this approach welcome.  
>>> 
>>> Wondering if anyone out there has found or devised a good tool for this task?  I searched the archives (thanks again Bill) and didn’t come up with any prior discussion on this topic, surprisingly. 
>>> 
>>> Thanks all, 
>>> 
>>> David ‘must get ripped’ Arkin / ATA & CASBA
>>> 
>>> <IMG_9674.jpeg>
>>> 
>>>> On Sep 12, 2017, at 6:32 PM, Bill Christensen <billc_lists at greenbuilder.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Yes, our archives (nearly 30 years worth!) can be a lot to sift through!  The good news is that a) the search engines regularly index the archives and b) there are very few other instances of our subject line identifier,  "[GSBN]", out there.  
>>>> 
>>>> Go to Google or your other favorite search engine
>>>> 
>>>> Enter: [GSBN] followed by the topic/keyword(s) of your choice
>>>> 
>>>> for instance:
>>>> 
>>>> [GSBN] clay paint
>>>> 
>>>> or 
>>>> [GSBN] chemical sensitivity
>>>> 
>>>> et voila, lots of results without digging through 30 years worth of posts.  
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>> 
>> -- 
>> Chris Magwood
>> Director, Endeavour Centre
>> 
>> www.endeavourcentre.org
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