I’m not terribly interested in photographing sawdust and shavings as an art form, but I was interested in doing it because I wanted to see if my saws were really doing things the way they were supposed to. Being in the ever-so-fun milling stage of the nightstand 2 projects, I’ve made a lot of sawdust so far.

First, from the big 4.5TPI ripsaw:

You can see that these are like little chunks taken out with a chisel. This is good, because a ripsaw’s teeth are supposed to act like chisels.

Here is a more distant shot of a bunch these things next to a 2.25″ plane shaving for a size comparison (the wood is black cherry, incidentally):

Okay, yee-haw, now what about crosscut sawdust? There’s a result of the same board cut with my 7TPI Winchester crosscut saw:

These things are a lot smaller and look like slivers, which is also about right.

Just for fun (and to see the difference in size), here are a few pieces of the rip sawdust sprinkled on top of the crosscut stuff:

Okay, that concludes this episode of dorking around with the macro lens. There’s a lot of sawing ahead of me.