How to clamp thin pieces of wood properly on Festool MFT for hand planing?

[Niels J. Larsen]

I've used my Festool MFT table successfully in the past for hand planing thick boards.

Today I had to plane a thin board - thinner than the height of the festool clamping elements - and I had trouble planing the full length of the thin board.

What do you guys do?

Please don't tell me to use a "real" bench - as I don't own one anymore.
I used to, but I never used it much and it was in bad shape and just took up too much of my precious shop space.

Thanks!
Niels

[Todd Burch]

OK, use a REAL thickness planer!! (Sorry, couldn't resist)

[Mark Koury]

Same as the old days:

Use a bench hook with a thin back stop.

[Niels J. Larsen]

OK, use a REAL thickness planer!! (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Yeah yeah :rolleyes: well I did - and I got tearout - so that's why I'm now down to hand planing. :D

[Scott T Smith]

When I run into this situation I make a hardwood spacer that is slightly thinner than my board, to go in-between the board and the Festool clamps. Works like a charm.

[george wilson]

A drum type thickness sander works very well for thin work,and figured woods. I got a Delta very late in my career,and wish I'd had the means to get one 40 years ago,though there weren't such options back then. I made guitars,and had to plane everything by hand,or scrape it if difficult.

There was an 18th. C. tool for working thin wood. It is in the Diderot Encyclopedia. It was all Brass,and consisted of a flat bar across the bottom,one threaded pillar on each side ( about 8" wide,I guess). It had thumbscrews on each pillar,which also held a brass bar,perhaps 1" square,as was the bottom bar. Held in the top bar was a flat scraper,held parallel to the bottom bar ( by hand adjustment of the thumbscrews),and tilted at an angle. You pulled your wood through it,lowered the top bar a little bit,and repeated till your strips were done.

I always meant to make a copy of the device,which is very cool looking,but haven't gotten around to it.

They also had a thickness planer that worked similarly. Big blocks of oak,vertical wooden rods on each side held by wedges. There was a big wide hand plane type iron in the top block. You pulled the wood through. I guess the iron was about 8" wide. It must have taken some horsepower to pull wood through it! Obviously for fine cuts only,and possibly just for truing up the parallelism of previously hand planed wood.

Then,there was a straight sided jack plane,with adjustable slats on each side,held to the body by screws sitting in adjustment grooves. You may have seen back saws with a piece of adjustable metal on 1 side,so you could only cut to a pre set depth. Same sort of thing. Probably useful for making venetian blinds in the 18th. C. (which they had then),or similar sorts of thin wooden slats for looms,etc.,small boxes,and so on.

[Loren Hedahl]

Try sticking it down with carpet tape.

Another idea is to use the releasable contact cement that auto body guys use on their random oscillating sanders to hold the sanding discs. Put it on the table, not the wood. It cleans off quite easily -- a chisel for the bulk of it and a swipe of lacquer thinner on a rag for the residue.

[Rod Sheridan]

Another vote for a bench hook, that's how I plane thin strips on a bench........Rod.