Denis's bandsaw post brings up a question - anyone have any tricks to preparing for the bandsaw?
I have no riser block on my 14" Delta, so it's important for me to slab anything I'm going to cut round carefully, to stay within 6 1/4", as well as provide a surface flat enough to keep control of tipping and blade binding. My solution is a scrub and block plane for the small surface. The scrub makes fairly short work of major irregularities, and can be followed by a couple of cross-grain strokes of the block plane for smooth. I can then draw my circle on the larger face and make my cut.
I have also used a plywood "bottom" on thinner pieces, shimming for parallel to the larger face and attaching with woodscrews. I suppose if I had the greater height available with a riser block I would use this method more often, perhaps even with my circle-cutting jig, which steals even more capacity.
Though I generally cut perpendicular to the face to keep all available shape options open, I sometimes nibble off more wood by tilting the table and taking a second pass to help balance an especially wet or misshapen piece. I have also nibbled pieces too tall for perpendicular cutting by tilting and nibbling wedge-shaped circles.
There must be other tricks out there.