Cutting The Cedar

Our task for this lovely day was to turn these six 18ft clear western red cedar 2X4s into 96 3/4" by 1/4" 18 foot strips.

First, which way to cut the boards had to be decided. As you can see, our setup for the project is quite makeshift. Randy is usually making furniture in his spare time.
Each board was cut lengthwise into strips the height of the board (1 1/2") and slightly wider than 3/4", to allow for planing.

Notice the finger board holding the board snug against the fence.
Each board was cut 8 times, the final cut leaving only a piece of cedar ribbon. Using a thin saw blade made for very little waste.

My job was to pull the cut piece away from the saw blade, and stack the strips outside for running through the planer.