milling very thin pieces

[Anthony Scott]

I routinely need to mill pieces 1/8" thick and many times even thinner. I have read numerous articles and tried numerous things all with varying degrees of crappy results.
I have tried using a carrier board for my Dewalt DW735 planer. It usually shreds the boards even at 1/8 thick. My blades were just sharpened and I have tried both speeds.
I have tried cutting the strips on a bandsaw a hair over thickness, then hand planing. Besides being a major chore, these are very hard to keep down on the bench. I have tried using double stick tape. However that is very hard to remove from a thin strip without breaking it.
Has anyone been able to get a similar planer to work with pieces this thin?
If not, what other options are there?
Thanks!

[Matt Krusen]

In my experience, the best option for bringing pieces to a very thin thickness is a drum sander. Unfortunately, they're pretty spendy. I got a steal on my drum sander so I haven't had to use my Dewalt 735 for thin pieces too much. However, I just put a Shelix in it and I wonder if that may help with thin pieces at all?? I'll have to try that out.

[Dominic Carpenter]

A zero clearance plate on the table saw, a sharp blade riving knife, and a good push block should provide you the ability to rip very thin strips. I have a sliding table saw and a rip fence I can slide back ( like a Unifence). This setup makes it easy and safe, however, if you do not have the slider or a Unifence style fence, and your planer is not able to go that thin even with a auxiliary table, a drum sander is the only other tool that would provide you consistent results over numerous runs. Would be interested in other thoughts. The Band Saw is a good safe option, but the issue seems to be the final smoothing and consistency, that's what the drum sanders where designed for (veneer quality results).

[Mac McQuinn]

I've used a planer to mill down 2-1/2" wide Ash into 1/8" thick strips without any issues. I used double face carpet tape to hold them in place. The planer was an old Ryobi 10" model which I think has a very slow feed rate. What type of wood are you milling? I wonder if the hardness of the wood is causing problems or perhaps the feed rate of the planer or a combination of both. Have you tried putting the strips through on a slight angle to achieve a shearing action?
Mac

[Prashun Patel]

Ive been recently doing the michael fortune trick on the planer. Use a deck to allow the cutter head to go below 1/8, then when infeeding, bend the trailing end way up so the leading edge is pressed down by leverage. When the cutter engages after a few inches you can let go and then pull up the leading edge on the outfeed side when it emerges to exert pressure on the trailing edge downward. Clear as mud? Its in the garden chair video on fww.

[Ryan Mooney]

You can jurry rig together a drum sander like setup with a sanding drum in the drill press and a board as a fence.

I've also cut a slot in a board and pressed thin pieces into that and used a hand plane to size them (if you put guides on the side of the plane to keep it from digging into the supporting board it works pretty well - although it gets pretty tiresome after the first 100 or so pieces :D)

[Anthony Scott]

Don't have a drum sander and they are pretty expensive, but it seems it would be useful... I just hate sanding so to spend money on one, not sure how I feel about that.
Mac, I have tried double stick tape, but I usually wind up breaking some of the pieces while trying to free them from the tape because they are so thin.
Prashun, I will try that.
ryan, when I try to hand plane the thin pieces they tend to lift up and sometimes break. Also, getting a planing stop thin enough to allow clearance for the hand plane it tough. How does the board hold the thin strip still?
Thanks

[Raymond Fries]

Maybe you could try sticking the sandpaper to your bench and push the stock back and forth on the paper. Use a rubber glove or masking take for friction. Good luck...

Enjoy Life...

[Thomas Hotchkin]

Anthony
I had some very good luck using thin double back tape (IIRC) made by 3M, only on the front 2" of the wood strip using a carrier board. Cutting off that 2" as it was a little under size, before use. I have Older (1983) 13" Delta planer. It was Ash and Black Walnut, wood grain direction was very important in the process. Tom

[Justin Ludwig]

A glue-line rip blade on the TS with a zero clearance insert. Set the fence so the needed piece falls off the outside of the blade. Hand sand any tool marks. Badda bing.

[Anthony Scott]

Interesting... I will try that.

[Anthony Scott]

Anthony
I had some very good luck using thin double back tape (IIRC) made by 3M, only on the front 2" of the wood strip using a carrier board. Cutting off that 2" as it was a little under size, before use. I have Older (1983) 13" Delta planer. It was Ash and Black Walnut, wood grain direction was very important in the process. Tom

Thanks, I'll try it.

[John TenEyck]

If you routinely need to make thin parts you really do need a drum sander. I paid $500 for a really nice used Delta 18x36 about 4 years ago, and I would never want to be w/o it now. I don't now if you think that is spendy or not; to me it was a great deal and the last 4 years have justified every dollar spent. You can make thin parts all day long, narrow or wide, with tolerances that can't easily be achieved any other way.

John

[Jim Finn]

Are you working with hardwood or softwood? Good luck getting soft wood thinner than 1/4" with a planer. It might be that those having success making thin panels are using different wood type than you are working with.

[Nathan Love]

Double tape works great for hold down on my cnc. Put down a layer of clear packing tape, then the double stick, the a layer of packing tape on the work. leave a tail sticking out on this piece, and when you want to remove the work, just pull up on this tail. Best part of this method is no residue from the carpet tape. ( use 3m, NOT Gorilla Tape!)

[Ryan Mooney]

ryan, when I try to hand plane the thin pieces they tend to lift up and sometimes break. Also, getting a planing stop thin enough to allow clearance for the hand plane it tough. How does the board hold the thin strip still?


I plowed a groove in a piece of wood that was the depth I wanted the piece to be and chiseled a square stop in the end. Probably makes more sense with pictures (goes out to shop and re-creates the experience).

This took about 10 minutes - I plowed a groove in a piece of oak with a plow and router plane to just a bit shallower than I wanted the strip to be (the plow can't go right up to the stop so I used the router plane to finish that - I could use a powered router or whatever to cut the groove - you could even do a through cut with a dado blade and put in an insert for a stop or.. well dozens of ways to cut a stopped groove I guess ).

In this case its about 3/16" or so deep but I've done down to 1/16" pieces like this with success (it gets a bit harder the thinner they are alright, down to about 1/8" isn't to bad).

290300

Put the piece in the groove (in this case I didn't even need the stopped end, since it was tight enough to be tapped in, but after a few dozen strips .. I'd need the stop)

290301

4-5 passes with the smoothing plane and its shiny smooth (which you probably can't tell the difference because my camera takes potato quality pictures if the light is a bit low).
290302

If you need to stop the plane at a specific depth put some low friction tape on the sides of it fore and aft of the blade to build up a stop and wax the heck out of the block (or double stick tape thin strips of hardwood or brass to the bottom). You have to replace the tape every so often if you do that. I just practiced getting better at where I wanted to stop.. not perfect, but decidedly well into mediocre after a while.

I did a bit over 100 pieces like this that were all pretty consistent (less than 1/64" difference) on 4 sides and then once I was done bought a drum sander for the next batch - which I never did :rolleyes:. The drum sander has been handy for plenty of other projects though so no regrets.

[Brian W Smith]

Just curious what the other dimensions are of your pcs....1/8" x ? x ?

[Anthony Scott]

Wow thats neat. Thanks for the run through.


I plowed a groove in a piece of wood that was the depth I wanted the piece to be and chiseled a square stop in the end. Probably makes more sense with pictures (goes out to shop and re-creates the experience).

This took about 10 minutes - I plowed a groove in a piece of oak with a plow and router plane to just a bit shallower than I wanted the strip to be (the plow can't go right up to the stop so I used the router plane to finish that - I could use a powered router or whatever to cut the groove - you could even do a through cut with a dado blade and put in an insert for a stop or.. well dozens of ways to cut a stopped groove I guess ).

In this case its about 3/16" or so deep but I've done down to 1/16" pieces like this with success (it gets a bit harder the thinner they are alright, down to about 1/8" isn't to bad).

290300

Put the piece in the groove (in this case I didn't even need the stopped end, since it was tight enough to be tapped in, but after a few dozen strips .. I'd need the stop)

290301

4-5 passes with the smoothing plane and its shiny smooth (which you probably can't tell the difference because my camera takes potato quality pictures if the light is a bit low).
290302

If you need to stop the plane at a specific depth put some low friction tape on the sides of it fore and aft of the blade to build up a stop and wax the heck out of the block (or double stick tape thin strips of hardwood or brass to the bottom). You have to replace the tape every so often if you do that. I just practiced getting better at where I wanted to stop.. not perfect, but decidedly well into mediocre after a while.

I did a bit over 100 pieces like this that were all pretty consistent (less than 1/64" difference) on 4 sides and then once I was done bought a drum sander for the next batch - which I never did :rolleyes:. The drum sander has been handy for plenty of other projects though so no regrets.

[Anthony Scott]

Just curious what the other dimensions are of your pcs....1/8" x ? x ?

It varies but anywhere from 3/4" to a few inches wide and 1-2' long

[jack forsberg]

you need a planner with rubber in and out feed roller and the one without chip breaker or pressure bars. I use my Hitachi F 1000. What i do/did before i got my drum sander was to make a vacuum table/sled box for the planer bed out a melamine. I built a small box under it for the shop vac hose to connect too and drilled many small holes in the sled top. planes very thin stock down to 1/32. I use tape to cover holes i am not using at the time and customize the width to my piece.

[mreza Salav]

I have tried all the methods you mentioned (and some more). with some wood you can do it with a (lunch-box) planer, with others as you said it just shreds the wood, for e.g. it is very difficult to get a piece out the planer from hard maple that is not damaged in some form. If the peices you want are not too wide you can do it on the table saw plus a little bit of hand sanding.
If you need wider pieces then drum sander is (unfortunately) the only option. I had to do a whole bunch of it (read hundreds of lf) in hard maple and my drum sander was out of commission waiting for some parts to arrive. Tried planer, tried lunch box planer with brand new blades but I was ruining more pieces than getting good ones.

[Loren Woirhaye]

I've done this when building guitars with hand planes by taping the work to workboard with a thin stop at the end. Because the work is thin it will buck up and jump the stop if not taped down. I've also just given in and put clamps on the corners of the work. Cam and spring clamps are at least easy to remove and re-clamp to turn the work around. Vacuum is probably a better way to do it but more work to set up.

Back in the day there where thickness scraping tools you would pull the work through. Some luthiers still use them I suppose. A modern variant is the sanding drum mounted on a drill press with a micro-adjustable fence. The work is hand fed... slow going but tear-out won't be an issue.

[Peter Quinn]

I have a vision of a vacuum table with a channel routed in just below 1/8", pin holes drilled in the table, and a dedicated belt sander with skates, one on each side, removable shims like a piece of laminate. Rip a hair over, sand one side, flip, remove shims, sand other side. Set it up once, never touch again. I think porter cable used to sell a jig to go in their belt sanders for precision sanding like that, not sure they do presently. That's the low budget vision in my head......in my shop it's a $2500 drum sander that gets it done in short order. Expensive but sime and accurate.

[Anthony Scott]

What hat size is your drum sander?


I have tried all the methods you mentioned (and some more). with some wood you can do it with a (lunch-box) planer, with others as you said it just shreds the wood, for e.g. it is very difficult to get a piece out the planer from hard maple that is not damaged in some form. If the peices you want are not too wide you can do it on the table saw plus a little bit of hand sanding.
If you need wider pieces then drum sander is (unfortunately) the only option. I had to do a whole bunch of it (read hundreds of lf) in hard maple and my drum sander was out of commission waiting for some parts to arrive. Tried planer, tried lunch box planer with brand new blades but I was ruining more pieces than getting good ones.

[Shawn Pixley]

I wouldn't try this on a planer. I would do it on my drum sander. Conversely, since I am a blended wood worker, you could set up a "shooting" jig if you were making pieces with consistant thicknesses (say 1/8") and narrow stock lese than 2-3/8" plane blade.

[Rick Fisher]

Sanding machine is really the right tool .. Bandsaw to cut it really close.. then sand

[Anthony Scott]

Looks like I will be keeping an eye on Craig's list for a drum sander. Thanks everyone.