I am making a jewerly box out of honey locust. Inside the box are (what seems like) miles of small dividers that are going to be joined in a half-lap design. I have bandsawed these dividers to about 12 x 1 x 1/8 " (about the size of the old rulers you had at school). I don't want to run them through the planer to get all the bandsaw lines out because I've had a few planer explosions in the past with stuff under
1/8, and don't want to risk that.
Sanding them with the palm sander is my only power option, and is a major PITA because I don't have an easy way to secure them other than holding them in my hands. At the end of working on them, my hands feel like they have fallen asleep they are tingling so much. Would a sanding mat help here?
One thing you may want to try as a sanding mat is that quasi sticky matting material you get at RV places. It is used for lining shelves in motorhomes, trailers etc, so your stuff doesn't slide around. Inexpensive and disposable if your sander wanders off the edge and chews it up a bit. Never tried it yet, but will when I build my downdraft sanding table.
Have you tried running the thin stock through a planer on top of a 3/4" thick board?
A router mat will help hold the pieces but I believe that you are going to round over all the edges sanding this way with a palm sander. Find some one with a drum sander.
sanding mats work best with large flat pieces- the ones that don't really need them in the first place. small thin parts just seem to squish the mat up around the edges so that the sander pad hits the mat and snags. but then I have a ROS rather than a OS and I'm a cheapskate and try to use carpet padding and no-slip shelf paper for sanding mats.
fine woodworking recently ran in the tips section a tip about thickness planing by hand, involving essentially a shooting board. looks like it'd do a real nice job for you.
I have one of those sanding mats, made from the stuff sears sells for lining tool box bottoms... it's like the shelf lining material mentioned, but heavier with a larger "weave".. Things stick to it pretty well and dust goes through it well..
If all else fails, use double-sided REMOVEABLE squares or tape to hold the pieces to the bench or a chunk of sheet material..
Tue, Nov 16, 2004, 5:44am (EST-3) of_the snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (todd=A0the=A0wood=A0junkie) says: I am making a jewerly box
The blade in my bandsaw isn't top quality. But, it does make a pretty smooth cut, definitely smooth enough I wouldn't need to run wood thru my planer to get the blade marks out. If it was me, I'd probably just make a sanding block, hold one end of a strip down, make a few passes with the sanding block, then switch ends. Or, make something like a shooting board, so I could use a sender.
JOAT Any plan is bad which is incapable of modification.
Almost forgot until I responded to the thread on Oscillating Spindle Sanders. I fence and thickness sand on mine - JET. But that would take some really bad bandsaw marks to get me away from the plane.
To the OP - have you considered a v-groove bit
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groove the long members and double chamfer on the shots' ends to wedge/glue? Did that with some kids in class a few years back, and it worked great.
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to invoke that old rule of "Any new project requires a new tool". A nice drum sander would be a fun addition, I think. However, since that is, I suspect, not very likely, how about this technique that I have used a number of times with good success (YMMV): 1) Clamp your belt sander sideways on the bench. 2) Build a small jig that goes up against the belt, and has a small slot to hold the pieces to be sanded. 3) Put on hearing and eye protection, fire up the dust collection (even a shop-vac will work well for this) and feed the pieces through the mechanism. I would recommend about a 200 grit belt...the finer the better, actually. If you feed them in through the jig in the same direction as belt travel, they WILL self-feed...I have done it that way myself. Alternatively, feeding against belt travel works well, too...but can be more work. Note that there IS some hazard that you will shorten a finger with this, but, common sense, push sticks and light pressures usually minimize that problem. Alternatively, if you have one of these large belt sanders (6x48 or something like that), you can do much the same thing by simply clamping a bar across the belt at the appropriate height for the thickness of the divider and feeding them through.
Finally...a Scary Sharp block plane will work GREAT for smoothing these things down. Just lay them on a good flat surface (workbench, sheet of plywood on top of your table saw, etc) and take light cuts.
Hum...those are all the techniques I have used in the past that come to mind...hope ONE of them helps. And remember...there IS always that rule ("new project...New Tool"). *smile*.
You need a Gilbert Sanding Disk - this is what a lot of people use to thickness sand things to accurate tolerance using a drill press.
Contact Greg Matonis at
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and see a picture of the thing under "Special Tools" at
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things are great for working with small parts. See 7th picture down at
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get an idea of the scale you can work at comfortably. (These are guitar bindings. I did a batch myself this way just this weekend. The disk is lurking at the left of the frame in the 6th picture.
Do you have a router? Are all the pieces really the same size -- or close? Then try routing a 3/32" deep stop dado in a piece of lumber of your choice that fits the pieces. Cut the dado 1" wide but longer than the pieces, actually -- that is, so that the full-width section of the dado is the right length for the pieces but the radius of the router bit extends further. IOW, do not route to length and then square the corners. Instead, the extra rounded length gives you an easy way to get in to lift up each piece after sanding. If this does not fit your fancy, maybe some variation will. FWIW.
PERHAPS, this system would also work to hold the pieces for finishing by the planer, but I do not know since I've never used one. -- Igor
I second Stephen's suggestion but have an extra sacrificial piece on each end of the panel so that the ROS doesn't 'over' sand the outside edges of the good pieces.
Apologies for the "me too", but that's exactly how I do it. I also sometimes use a homemade shooting-board-of-sorts that has an "L"-shaped stop for holding the pieces.
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