I'll spare you the back story, but the essence of it is that I need a small strip about 1/2" tall by about 6" long that needs to be precisely 11/64" thick. Could be wood, could be metal, could be plastic. Material doesn't really matter.
My saw is far too sloppy to make such a thing. It's too thin to plane by hand I think. (I could maybe put the plane upside down in a vise and move the work across the sole, but this seems almost impossible to do without cutting myself.) I could maybe patiently work down to that with a belt sander, but this thing would be very hard to control, and for the accuracy I need, probably the hump from the joint in the belt is enough to screw it up. I could hand sand on granite maybe... Or slide it back and forth on a file.
If it were me, I'd route two stopped dados 11/64 apart on the router table, about 5/8 deep, then flip and route the back side of the strip, leaving the strip attached only on the ends.
But then again, I have an Incra jig, which is accurate enough to do those kinds of things ;-)
Alternately, route a dado 11/64 deep in a big board, and use it as a shooting board for a plane. Put the raw stock in the slot, attach a board for the side of the plane, and just keep planing until the plane is riding on the big board.
A loose strip, or could you fasten a honking great edge banding (or whatever you're making) into place, then plane it down to suit ?
Getting the thickness accurate is awkward. Doing it on the unsupported strip is even harder.
Table saw ? Bet you could do it. Put a wooden strip fence into place with G clamps, if you have to.
Clamping it down is a little tricky, but this is certainly hand-planeable.
Poor man's bench dogs: Take a piece of ply or MDF sheet, a few inches wide and a foot or so long. G-clamp it down to the bench and use it as a bench stop (or use a pop-up dog). Put the workpiece against it.
Now take another piece, and push it hard against the other end. Clamp it down. Put the G clamps far enough away from the workpiece and you can get a plane in there, and the MDF is below the surface of the timber.
When I was building my bench I did this a lot (lots of dog holes, big tail vice for opposing dogs, but it was a year after I'd built the top before I'd finished the tail vice)
The Japanese use this "Great Plane" idea to make wrapping paper !
Bob Wearing's book has an inlay banding thicknessing jig that would probably work.
Take a narrow board, and a couple of sheetmetal brackets. Now take the working parts of an iron spokeshave (use that one you dropped and broke the handle off) and mount those to the brackets, an accurate distance above the board. Use this like a drawplate as a thicknessing guide.
IIRC, this was a pretty small piece, wasn't it? Something like 11/64 x 3/4 x
6? I *know* I have plenty of scrap I could mill something that small out of, in just a few minutes. E-mail me with precise dimensions, and your snail-mail address. I'll do it for you for cost of postage plus a dollar.
Note that the email address on this post is a spam-trap. Correct address is in my sig.
-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
Better hold off a bit, but I'll definitely think about that if you have some good way to mill it to precise dimension. I really can't come up with anything reasonable.
I'm backing off a bit because the 11/64" strip might not be the answer to my ultimate problem after all. I need to fiddle.
I figured on starting with a strip about 18" long and power-planing it to correct thickness and width, checking with a dial caliper before each pass and creeping up on the final dimensions. Final step would be to crosscut to exact length on the table saw.
Let me know...
-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)
How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
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