Smooth Planing Thin Boards

[Greg Crawford]

I've recently gotten some good planes for smoothing, and have been practicing on scraps. Now, I have some thin (1/4") boards I need to smooth, and would like to use a plane. The only way I've come up with to hold them is to use some wooden dogs I made as stops and stack wood underneath to bring the surface above the top of the dogs.

Is there a better way to hold thin stock for planing? I have some brass dogs, but prefer the wood since I'll be so close to begin with. The boards also aren't big enough to make a hold down practical.

Thanks.

[Randy Klein]

You could double stick tape it to a thicker piece then dog up the thicker piece as you normally would.

[Matt Hankins]

The non-neander method would be to attach the thinner piece to another piece of wood with double stick tape. As long as your plane is sharp and you are taking thin passes it should hold.
I was going to suggest a bench hook as well, but I think the piece would skip up over the stop.

Matt

[Matt Hankins]

Great minds think alike, Randy, and at the same time!
Matt

[Robert Rozaieski]

Height adjustable planing stop is the way I do it. Your dogs will work if they can be adjusted in height. Just make the height of the dog slightly less than the thickness of your piece and plane into the stop. Takes a little getting used to but you adjust quickly. Another option if your dogs/planing stop cannot be adjusted low enough is to put a thicker board against the planing stop (or clamp it to the bench with a holdfast or two) and drive a couple of small nails or escutcheon pins into the board just below the thickness of the piece to be planed. Then use the pins as planing stops for the thin piece.

[Greg Crawford]

I've got plenty of double sided tape for router templates, so may give that a try. Robert's idea of the nails is intriguing, too. That would help keep it from skipping over the top with the heads slightly digging into the end grain.

Thanks.

[Steve Thomas]

A bench hook type stop is great to use for this.
Take a peice of ply slightly loner then then the board you want to plane and glue a stop and a fence to it, the same hight as your finished thickness, so that you have foward and lateral support. when you start planning the fences away you know you've gone too far!

I'll try and find a pic.

Can't find one of what i was talking about. but here is CS's soultion
http://blog.woodworking-magazine.com/blog/content/binary/planing-stop.jpg

[Sam Takeuchi]

I regularly plane boards less than half that thickness. My way is simply to clamp far side of the board onto the bench top. Just use a scrap or batten as cauls to avoid damaging the board. I do it on a piece with slightly less than 4" wide. It's pain switching clamps to the other side every couple swipes, but it gives the most consistent result and very importantly a level surface. Double sided sticky tape might work, but acts as a shim under the piece and creates high spots around the area with tape underneath. Planing them flat would create low spots at where tapes were.

Another method I use for even smaller piece, but just as thin is use a thin metal piece. I have a 0.6mm thick (about 0.024" I believe) aluminum piece about 6" long (choose material and length that doesn't flex under planing pressure. Mine flexes. Too long and too thin, so sometimes I use 1mm steel sheet) I clamp the far end of it onto the bench, use the other end as the stop. Butt the piece against it and plane it without securing it. Ideally corrugated soled plane works the best, so the piece doesn't stick to the sole of the plane. It's not a problem, but it's annoying. Again, if your piece is flexy, it is the most reliable way to keep the piece flat. If the work piece is smaller, you can just grab a card scraper and secure it onto the top like described above. I have rather annoying occasions to make 3" long and 2" wide wooden patches about 1/16" thick, and with scraper stop, I can do that without problem. But anything less than that seems too flexy.

[Dominic Greco]

Greg,
I built a thin parts planing sled like the kind shown in FWW by Norm Priollo.

Four Bench Jigs for handplanes (http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/Workshop/WorkshopPDF.aspx?id=31728)

It has a 1/4" high built in stop. Now that I've built it I find myself using it all the time.

[harry strasil]

this is a picture of a piece of 1/8 inch stuff I planed.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v81/irnsrgn/wood/bench5.jpg

stop is a brass screw.

[glenn bradley]

Here's mine (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=111298&d=1235612885).

[Richard Dooling]

Harry, that's great! Do you have a tap that large? I wonder if I cut part of the thread out of a large bolt if it would cut well enough to thread wood.

I'll try that this evening.

[Greg Crawford]

I think Harry take the KISS principle to depths I've never seen before! No wonder he gets so much done!

Lots of great methods. Really appreciate the suggestions. Anyone want to do the work for me now? Not really. Anytime I can make shavings, it's more like playing than work, especially since I have a couple of new toys.

Thanks All

[Jim Koepke]

One of my fantasy projects is to build a planing only bench. One of the things it will have is small holes into a lower chamber to be connected to a vacuum. This will then hold small and thin pieces to be planed. When I worked in a silk screen printing shop we had such for holding things while they were being printed.

Currently, I have a piece somewhat inspired by Junior's screw head method. Instead of screws, a piece of wood was cut to have an edge like a flat head screw and was secured in to a recess on a longer board. The long board has some dowels to hold it to the bench via the dog holes. Also made a wooden dog with a bevel down top to hold pieces on the bench.


Pictures were added below. It looks like pictures can not be added to a post by editing.

jim

[harry strasil]

Richard its just a large wood screw. you can see the second one off to the left, they are just screwed into a counter sunk hole in the bench top for wider pieces, My NuBench has them too.

If you don't want to put them directly in your bench top, just take a dowel that will fit your bench dog holes and cut a slot in the top of it centered and then drill a small hole in the center of the slot and use a brass wood screw in that, the wood screw acts like a wedge to spread the dowel to hold it in the hole.

[Richard Dooling]

Great idea - thanks!

[Pam Niedermayer]

One of the advantages of wooden planes is that it's easy to attach things to the soles, for example, strips of wood to serve as combination depth stops and holders. Here's a more complicated and expensive version:

Inomoto-san's kumiko plane (http://japantool-iida.com/plane_others/2008/07/hikouki-kanna-by-inomoto.html)

Pam

[Stu Gillard]

I've just started using non-slip rubber matting for thin boards. I do have an adjustable height bench stop, but for larger sheets, the rubber matting is great. It's thin enough so that there is no real spring.
SWMBO uses it on floor rugs and such. Not sure where you'd get it in the states, but we get it from a rubber merchant (Clarks Rubber in Australia).
You can see a bit of it in the pic just top right of the box on my bench.

[Jim Koepke]

Here are some pictures of different dog hole tools made for use on my bench.

The first one is made from a piece of scrap with a couple of dowels positioned to hold it in dog holes. The top piece was even with the edge of the rabbet, but gets banged up after time. It is held on with wood screws so it is easy to take it off and refinish the edge or replace the whole thing.

The others are just dowel stock. One is bigger than the dog holes at the top with a slight flat on one side. One has a square piece bored and glued on top, with one side beveled to hole wood down. Finally is just a piece of dowel that fits the dog holes. If need be, the top can be drilled to allow a small nail to be driven through to hold wood down.

I have also used similar methods to Harry, Steve and Glenn's. What ever works.

jim