my planer claims to surface down to 1/8" but what I've experienced is the wood lifting up into the knives and shattering...a wee bit scary. I've thought about taping it to another piece of heavy stock and sending it through the jointer would be better. I'm thinking once you get past the critical leading edge, the pressure on the tables would keep it from flexing and getting caught up in the knives. However you can back away from the planer as it goes through...not the jointer. What do you think?
maybe BUT the tape may compress a little, also if you get the tape caught up in the knives you may have a mess to clean. the resulting toothpicks can be sharp and they may be moving faster than you can back away! be carefull. let us know how it works. ps. if we dont here from you in a while where can we send the sympathy cards? :-]>
Skeez, You may have hit on something with your reply!!!!! The toothpicks you were talking about would be flying...........but how about a toothpick driven into a small hole in the wood and attaching the thin strip to a thicker board or mdf. The toothpick would not hurt the planer blades and if driven pointed side down, would hold the thin stock firmly. The holes drilled for the toothpicks could be filled just as screw or nail holes would be. I have about 300' of 1/8" to 1/4" poplar that was resawed off of a recent window sash project. Been trying to dream up a clever way to plane these. You may have provided the inspiration. Can't get to it soon but will provide feedback on my efforts when the the time comes. Lyndell
Interestingly enough, I just tried this with some walnut friday. It was about 3' x 5" wide 1/8" thick. I double stuck it with 2 strips of tape, the length of the board, to a 1" thick piece of oak and tried to take as small a bite as I could with the plane.
It cracked a piece right as it fed in and then went smoothly from there. The next pass, it cracked a bit more and then went ok. The first 2-3" were ruined and the rest was great. I guess if you can spare that much, it will work fine.
You didn't specify the width of the stock you're working with. Not certain if the following method will work for wider stock but it works for planing thin stock for line inlaying. Basically you lift up on the stock as you start the infeed then lift up on the stock as it comes out on the outfeed side. What you're doing is pressing the start/end of the part as it approaches, engages then exits the cutting knives. Michael Fortune does fine line inlaying and for really thin stuff he's made a sled for that purpose. Have a look. Might solve your problem.
On Sun, 01 Feb 2004 14:13:36 GMT, "mel" scribbled:
What I've done is to carpet tape the thin stuff on bed made of a
12X48" piece of 3/4" MDO plywood. MDF or Melamine would also work. I rip and tape two thin 48" strips (a little thicker than the wood to be planed) of scrap wood along the edges of the ply. The strips get planed along with your stuff. This prevents the bed from angling and the keeps pieces in the same plane as the planer blades.
The only problem is in getting super accurate results if they need to be a certain exact thickness. The carpet tape has a little "give" in it.
Luigi Note the new email address. Please adjust your krillfiles (tmAD) accordingly Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address
T'aint a problem for fairly short pieces, Mel. For surface planing, you make yourself a pushblock from perfectly flat thick ply or MDF, perhaps 2" longer than your workpiece and slightly wider. Mount a couple of handles on it fore and aft, so that it feels like a handplane.
On the rear underside, glue a cleat across the very back of the block - no pins or screws if you value your blades. Obviously this cleat needs to be fractionally thinner than your stock. This is the bit which will actually bear on the end of the workpiece and push it through, so it needs good sharp square edges. Cut a piece of fairly coarse (80 grit or so) abrasive paper to fit the rest of the underside and glue it in place - this stops the workpiece sliding about.
Make sure that the rear end of your stock is sharp and square, so that it will positively engage on the cleat. Set your jointer to take light cuts and have at it - the action needed is exactly like hand-planing. The handles keep your hands away from the blades, and the ply body completely covers the workpiece, so that, if you do get a catch, it won't be flying round the workshop.
For thicknessing, you'd make the pushblock exactly the same, except without the handles, and you'd use it upside down through your thicknesser.
Build a carriage to sit in your planer. Use melamine. Build it the width of your planer, and appoximately 4" longer than the bed. Screw 2x2 stock on the bottom of the melamine at each end, to prevent the melamine from slipping into the planer.
Adjust the height of your planer to slap the carriage in. It's nice to use a known thickness of melamine (eg: an inch) so you can still use your height gage for rough dimensioning (then use your calipers) calculating in thickness of you carriage.
I use this carriage quite often for creating stock for bent laminations. I use the carriage for anything under 1/2" to keep my stock from flexing even a couple of thou. Foolproof and reliable.
A bed as per above works fine if your tolerances needn't be too fine. In doing some bent lam work i use laminations well under 1/10" and need them to be consistent across the width to within 1/1000 or so. To do this make a sled(I use poplar) a feww inches longer and a bit wider than your slats. Joint a face flat and then run it through the planer jointed face down. You now have a sled whose top face is precisely parallel to planer blades. Put your piece on the sled and run it through. Be sure to mark the sled so that you know what direction you ran it through, which side is up, and what part of the planer you ran it through - left, right , middle - if sled is much narrower than planer knives. This way you will be sure to repeat operation if interrupted and come back a bit later. Also helps if your pieces are a bit longer than needed so you can cut off any snipe should there be some.
The carriage is as accurate as you want it too be. Within a thou if your blades are set to the carriage. If working with tolerances of a thou or under across the width of stock has to be repeatable, obviously setting knives at the time of planing would be in order, not chancing running a board through your planer in the exact location, as to "play" uneven planer knives. One would assume that the material was jointed first, then planed. If "playing offset planer knives" you'll have created a parallogram.
I admit, this is not all that noticable if working with veneers, but when we get into tolerances of a thou and under, hand tools is the next suggestion.
I've read somewhere about using a spindle sander or Drill press with a sanding bit in conjunction with a makeshift fence to create a miniature thickness sander for small pieces. In any case, it seems safer to me than using the planer. If you try it, let us know how it works.
I have a makita combination machine with "rubberized" infeed rollers. I made a bed liner out of 1/4" tempered masonite and screwed a batten to the bottom of the infeed end. the liner just slips into the planer and sits on top of the regular bed and the batten prevents the liner moving with thw stock. Then I waxed the liner with candle wax [as now there are no bed rollers] to allow the stock to slide easily .The infeed rollers not being serrated do not marr the planed surface. I can easily plane boards to 1/4" thickness in most cases much less......mjh
I feel like all this advice about building a sled is due to the misunderstanding of my original question. How would using a sled be any different from the material riding on the planer's table? Isn't a sled used when the capacity of the planer is limited? What prevents the material from lifting up into the knives when using a sled?
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