I built a knockoff of John Lanciani's bandsaw tall feather board with spring loaded rollers, hence rollerboard. John was kind enough to send me some photos of his unit. I modified his design just a little bit, but the overall design is still John's and I take no credit for it. Here it is mounted to my Grizzly G0636X.
Looking at the business end of the rollerboard:
As you can probably figure out, the rollers are mounted to pivot arms. Compression springs push the workpiece against the bandsaw fence. There are 10 rollers on my unit, probably don't need that many actually, and the overall height is about 13". Looking more closely at how the springs work:
The stock tall fence on my BS wasn't tall enough, and when I clamped a 12" tall piece of 3/4" plywood to it there was too much deflection from the springs pushing on it. That resulted in the veneer slice being wider at the top than bottom, so I built a new fence.
It clamps both to the stock low fence as well as the table and is very rigid.
The rollerboard assembly moves laterally on runners mounted to a base plate that moves front to back in the miter slot. The base plate is clamped to the table and the rollerboard assembly is clamped to the base plate with the star wheels.
If you look at the first photo you can see that the blade is completely shrouded by the fixed fence and the rollerboard. This saw has always scared the bejeebers out of me when I'm sawing wide veneer. No more.
To use the rollerboard you set the stock against the tall fence and push the rollerboard against it. Then I remove the stock and advance the rollerboard about 1/8" and tighten the star wheels. This gives sufficient force to hold the stock tightly against the tall fence but not so much to cause deflection in it. I cut this 10" wide board into slices about 0.095" thick and they are very, very consistent in thickness.
Best of all, there is absolutely no skill involved other than to use a constant feed rate. The rollerboard holds the stock tight to the tall fence, requiring no thought or attention from the user.
Hats off to John Lanciani's design, and his willingness to share it with me. I can now cut veneer more consistently with less effort and much higher safety. If you slice much veneer you might want to build one for yourself. With just a little prodding I could provide a SketchUp model and hardware parts list.
John
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