Cutting shims on a bandsaw. How?

[dirk martin]

I need to cut a couple of thousand shims....you know, those angled thingys like you'd wedge under a door.

4" long, and they need to taper from 0" to 3/8".

I'd like to do it on my bandsaw, as that seems the safest.
I'd like to load up a nice carbide blade, to get a smooth finish, with lots of tension, and bang these out...since I've got so many to do. It's a large 24" Minimax bandsaw.

Anybody ever do something like this? Can you share your technique?

[John Pratt]

The woodsmith shop recently had a tip on doing this. I can't find the link, but basically you cut a birds mouth in a board that you run between the fence and the blade. Place the shim material in the notch/birds mouth and the shim will be cut the size of the notch.

[Rod Sheridan]

John's method is the one I've used.

The thing to remember is the grain direction.

You first have to cut your board into pieces slightly shorter than the desired shim length.

Then you run it through the saw with the taper jig.

Regards, Rod.

[dirk martin]

Do you mean "slightly longer", rather than "slightly shorter" ?

[Josiah Bartlett]

I just free hand them. You need a jointed edge to get them to be uniform. I just start with a board thicknessed to the thick dimension that I want and the length of the taper, then just cut corner to corner.

I use a 1/2" Woodslicer 3-4tpi blade and it comes out smooth enough. I like my shims to have a bit of the saw marks left on them because it makes them grip each other a bit better. Smooth shims tend to pop out unless you pin them in somehow.