Best way to back resawn boards?

[Bill Moser]

I have a few 10-12" wide soft maple boards with an interesting grain/color pattern. I'm planning on resawing these by hand to 1/2" thick (or perhaps 1/4", if I have the strength and perseverance). At that thickness, they won't be thick enough after planing w/o some sort of backing. If I recall correctly, James Krenov's technique was to glue up some 1-2" wide strips of some secondary wood for this purpose. Has anybody tried this, or have other ideas/approaches that work? ( or, DON'T work, so I can avoid them :-) )

[Chris Fournier]

Be careful, after resawing you may well get substantial cupping and in the end just have a mess on your hands. Soft maple can go either way! I have used 1/4" thick soft maple panels in my work over the years with no supporting backing at all. I suppose that it really depends on the size of you panels. If you want guaranteed success perhaps you can shoot for shop veneer thickness and then apply the maple to a suitable substrate; this works very well.

[john brenton]

If you're resawing through 10" by hand you'll most likely get pieces 1/2", 3/8", 1/4" and back to 1/2". Haha. What are you going to use them for?

[Bill Moser]

Yeah, cupping will probably be an issue, so maybe I should just rip them to a smaller size (and make it easier on my sawing arm) before resawing. I have something like 15-20 board feet of this stuff, and once its gone, there'll be no more, so I'd like to get the most out of it. The first few pieces will be used for the tops of a coffee table and a tv stand.