Long wooden posts from beams by hand

[bloodbowel]

Summary

Features "Make long wooden posts from beams by hand"

Purpose of change

While working on something else I noticed long wooden posts can't be made by hand but only with powertools. Other posts can.

Describe the solution

Added a recipe for creating long wooden posts from beams by hand. It's identical to the powertool recipe but uses a regular saw and takes a little longer.

Describe alternatives you've considered

I think this was just an oversight. No reason you can't do this already.

Testing

Tested on my computer in debug mode.

Additional context

[Karol1223]

This was intended that they lack a manual recipe. Check the PR adding wooden posts for details why.

[bloodbowel]

This was intended that they lack a manual recipe. Check the PR adding wooden posts for details why.

I can't find it. Could you show me?

This would mean if you make your own wooden posts from a beam, the product of a log, you can't eventually get a small wooden post without power tools. As a result you need powertools to make something like a chair. That doesn't seem right. Chairs exist that were made before powertools, and of high quality too, so there is something missing here. Even if the task needs to take significantly longer it should still be doable. Convenience is no object.

If I want to roleplay as an amish person or something I should be able to make what they make. Here is a random picture of the interior of an amish house I found on the internet. All this should be possible by hand.

[HadeanLake]

I can't find it. Could you show me?

I think this is the PR in question. It has some comments about wood, as a material, is made of a bunch of fibers and how that causes issues when hand tools are used.

Chairs exist that were made before powertools,

Made using muscle-powered machines, not hand tools alone (I think).

Adding muscle-powered (not literally powered in game terms, rather having high activity level and longer time to complete in associated recipe) appliances may be a solution you are looking for your problem.

[Karol1223]

I think #60750 is the PR in question. It has some comments about wood, as a material, is made of a bunch of fibers and how that causes issues when hand tools are used.

That's the correct PR, yes. Me and a-chancey (mainly a-chancey) put a lot of effort into figuring those out. Including a recipe with a manual wood saw when that PR specifically made comments about why not to is frankly just annoying.

If I want to roleplay as an amish person or something I should be able to make what they make.

By all means, but you have to use the proper methods, and just using a hand wood saw to cut apart wooden beams like that isn't the method. I am not familiar with amish woodworking techniques but I highly doubt they go against what we've established in #60750?

[Hydrogen-Deuteride]

It is doable, but it wont take 20 mins...

Judging by description of heavy wooden beam, if its square, it would be about 18cm wide(18x18x244cm block), main problem of cutting it with wood saw is that you cant cut straight - slight deviations will present which will lead to this effect that saw will get jammed inside the cut and friction will keep make it stuck(thats by experience of doing something similar), you can remedy this by wedging metal or wood wedges inside the cut to spread wood, but it will work only once you already did like first 50cm of cut cause beam too thick.

Anotrher way is to try and split beam, make guiding cuts on surface and use axe, hammer and wooden wedges to split it, this method prone to failures as wood dont like to split in straight line, it will try split diagonaly and will mess half of a beam for sure, so in this method id expect making only 2 posts of a single beam, not 4 as in original recipe.

Also can try drill along cut bunch of holes and try to split beam using row of holes as a guide, but you will need to drill it whole day...

First cut woul be very difficult, the one where you need to cut 18x18cm into 2 18x9, other 2 cuts would be easier.

If you need to do this once, it could be done, but if need several, you better make proper sawing machine, recipe should reflect it by having like 6 hours requirement, it should hint that you doing it wrong. But again, if have no other choice, - it can be done.

I personally in the past did similar cut job on pine and oak beams(less than 15cm thick), but no longer than 40cm long, it is very slow, oak, dispite being harder wood, goes easier, pine is a pain.

[Karol1223]

Judging by description of heavy wooden beam, if its square, it would be about 18cm wide(18x18x244cm block)

It is supposed to be 8 inches thick, which is 20.32 cm. The PR linked above has assumed dimensions listed in the comments.

[Hydrogen-Deuteride]

Judging by description of heavy wooden beam, if its square, it would be about 18cm wide(18x18x244cm block)

It is supposed to be 8 inches thick, which is 20.32 cm. The PR linked above has assumed dimensions listed in the comments.

I see, i extrapolated data from its length and volume, and got 18 something if it is square, volume wrong or it is not squre i guess then.

[bloodbowel]

I read through the original discussion and spent a few hours doing research. Here's what I think.

Made using muscle-powered machines, not hand tools alone (I think).

These machines, like power tools, only make it more convenient to do the same thing. There are already recipes that can take days to complete so convenience is no object. This is better but I shouldn't need a machine at all to do this.

using a hand wood saw to cut apart wooden beams like that isn't the method

If the end product is the same, the method is valid, even if it takes longer to do. He does vaguely outline a method. A reference to the original discussion:

Cutting the same direction as the grain ("long grain") is almost always done by a power tool these days, and would be physically impossible with a bow saw due to the design of the saw

The blue lines are the rip cuts. The first image is for the posts, the second is for the planks. Those cuts are the ones that would require the band saw or table saw - cutting them by hand would be a nightmare- it would take forever and would require you to build a frame to be used as a cutting guide for anything that large.

Note the "almost always" and "these days" with regards to this practice. "it would take forever" and "a nightmare" implies it can be done. In a survival situation you might have no other way to do it. It would be impossible with a bow saw but not a wood saw. It needs a framing tool. It's exhausting and time consuming.

So here are some changes I would make:
1.Only allow for the recipe to be done with a wood saw
2.Increase the time the recipe takes significantly
3.Add a framing tool
4.Add this for planks but have it take even longer
5.Increase fabrication skill requirements
6.Increase the activity level of the work

[bloodbowel]

If you need to do this once, it could be done, but if need several, you better make proper sawing machine

I think I figured it out. The primitive way of doing this is a river or wind powered sawmill. I've only seen a pedal saw used for crosscuts. But to build a sawmill you need to saw a lot of wood first. Would it maybe be easier to crosscut the beam into two 4 ft sections and then cut 4ft posts or planks? It could then be made up of mostly those and only a few long pieces. Then you could use it to get 8 ft posts and planks quickly.

There is also a whipsaw which could be used with the help of an NPC to do this more quickly.

[Hydrogen-Deuteride]

Would it maybe be easier to crosscut the beam into two 4 ft sections and then cut 4ft posts or planks?

It wont make much difference. Instead of 1 very long task you would have 2 tasks for same total time and efforts, and all other issues will still remain.

If you wanna make things from ground up you need to build circular saw, if you cant build circular saw without parts which require circular saw itself to make them(sort of chicken-egg problem), then you need to fix recipe for circular saw so it can be built without using complex machinery.

There is this mod called "inawood mod", the idea there is to build everything from scratch, i wonder how they address this issue there...

[bloodbowel]

I made a couple of changes. Now it takes 6 hours, can only be done with a wooden saw or bronze wooden saw, is brisk exercise (you're weary after the entire thing), and is difficulty 3. I would make it higher but I don't know if you should be able to hit fabrication skill 6 from sawing a log. I still don't know what exactly would be used for a frame here. I also don't know how I would do this with long planks. 10 hours maybe?

sort of chicken-egg problem

This is how it used to be with blacksmithing but eventually it was resolved. I think in real life people used whipsaws and/or split wood to create the components for the first river sawmill and then after used beams and boards from that to make more. The circular saw was apparently invented later and improved sawmills.

It's not too hard in normal gameplay to attack a warehouse or hardware store, kill a few zombies, and get a powertool. This is what you could do if you didn't have access to those for whatever reason.

[kevingranade]

You really need to listen to the feedback you're given instead of treating it as obstacles to overcome.

Is it possible to rip saw an 8x8 into 4 4x4s with hand tools? Kind of. There's a big caveat that you are not going to end up with actual 4x4s but rather either wavy 4x4s or significantly smaller posts after planing away the cuts that will go awry.
Is it a reasonable thing to do? Not at all, the effort involved is rather insane and it doesn't even yield good results.

If your goal is "be able to make furniture with hand tools", don't just take the fact that furniture existed before power tools as justification for whatever solution you want to push, look into how hand-tool only crafting works. My understanding is that if you're going from timber to fine volumetric lumber, what you do is split the timber and then plane the resulting rough wood pieces. This is a completely different process than sawmill-driven volumetric lumber milling.

If you're going for "a thing that acts like a 4x4 in a survival situation", you don't start with an 8x8, you cut down a roughly 4x4 tree and just use that as is after debarking it, you don't need square stock for construction.

Additionally, if you're pushing "survival scenario desperation", as a rationale for using a ridiculous solution, the goal needs to be one critical for survival, not making furniture.