Does anyone have any tips on how to speed up the cutting of braces? The way I do it now is I layout my cuts, use my 7 1/4" circular saw to remove as much as I can and then finish up with a chisel. Mostly I use 3"x5" stock. I read somewhere once that you can use a 12" mitre saw but other than cutting the brace to length and nipping off the corners I can't see how it would help with the cutting of the tenon. I don't own a radial arm saw but I could see how it would be a big help - set a dado blade up 1.5" rotate to 45 deg. and there you go. How do you guys do your braces?

We use a big radial arm saw - 5HP 16". But I've done it with a 12" also. The tricky cut is the cheek. You can set the radial arm saw blade to be parallel to the table, but you have to take the blade guard off. I don't like it, so we stopped doing it. We made a sled for the band saw that works pretty well. Here's one of my students from last month using it. CB.

I use a Hitachi 10" sliding compound miter saw for the cross-cuts, and a Big Foot circular saw for the cheek (with 3x5 braces generally). Eighty braces in my next frame. I like the bandsaw jig Clark.
Brad

The French Snap. See pages 156-161 of the guilds "green book". Or you could eliminate those persistently annoying braces and build with Planks. Tim

What kind of time are we talking about to cut a single brace? It took me 2-1/2 hours to cut my first brace. Now it takes just about 48-50 min. to layout and cut a brace using a hand saw, chisel & rabbit plane. I can live with that, but then again I'm not trying to make a living at it. (maybe some day) The time stated does not include planing if need be.
I am curious as to how much time can be shaved off by the aid of some power tools?

Still working with true hand tools. Saw, axe, slick, mark peg, bore, size back w/hand plane, chanfer and repeat. a brace can be marked and cut 15-20 minutes, I am trying to make a living. I don't like that pace. I have switched to 3x6 stock to make the hand work shorter, as well as the mortice. Less wood removed. The brace is only half the work. It still takes about 15-20 min. per square ruled mortice.(boring machine). So let see what the power people have. X-number of braces in X-number of hours? Tim

"Gang cutting". I think that is what it is called. Cut as many as you need at once. If you can keep from searching, picking up, putting down, and adjusting tools constantly you can save time. Also with braces and other pieces with tenons I always try to make a good square end of tenon cut before drop cutting the tenon with a circular saw. Is that the cheek cut I am referring to? kerfing and chiseling or planing take up time.

Tim,

Thanks for the info on hand cutting -- always interesting to compare methods. It seems to me that's moving right along with hand tools. If I may ask -- when you mention that you can do one in 15-20 minutes, is that an average time or is that a record time?

As for our time -- we try to average 15 minutes per square rule (rough sawn) brace, layout and cutting. That's a simple, barefaced 3x5 or 4x6 brace. All cutting done with circular saws. We size the back with a hand held power plane when needed.

cheers

I have never done one in under 15 minutes. That is clear stright grain, which I look for in the brace stock. That doesn't always happen. It helps to have acouple of others in the shop to keep the peacefull competion up, as a gauge to see how fast they can be done. I can work a couple or 3 hours that way, then I need to do something else for a bit. 20-25 minutes is comfortable. As a side note I am always looking for the perfect brace, It has a knot right where the peg is located. Tim

I normally wouldn't reply to this thread - I'd rather leave it to those with more experience than I. But, I just finished cutting about 110 braces for my own timber frame and thought I'd pass along my experience.

I used a 12" RAS for most of the work.

As Daiku mentioned, the cheek cuts getting a little intimidating. I screwed 2x4's to the saw table which outlined the path of the blade. I covered those with a scrap of plywood, which prevented my hands or clothing from possibly contacting the blade. It was a little extra work, but I felt a lot safer.

I used the RAS to cut the stock to length, cut the cheeks and shoulders of the tenons, and then to backcut the tenons. I fastened guides and stops to the table, so I didn't have to measure and mark each piece.

I then cut a curve in a piece of 3/4" melamine, to use as a template, using a router on a 12' pivot arm. (there's a better name for that, but it's escaping me at the moment.) I used this template to draw the curve on each brace, a 14" bandsaw to roughcut each curve, and a spindle shaper to trim each curve to the template. I then sanded and used a router to bevel the edges.

I spent about 5 weekends doing all this, which I guesstimate works out to about 45 minutes per brace. Over half of that time was used to cut the curves. This past weekend I spent 11 hours just sanding and beveling.