Short Stock thru a Planer

[Stan Smith]

Hi folks. I need to plane some short mahogany stock--mainly to remove some resaw marks. Somewhere I saw a jig for sending short stuff through but I can't remember where it is now. Can someone please direct me to where I can see a pic or a plan of one. Thanks for any help.

Stan

[Frederick Rowe]

To plane short pieces of stock, simply feed them in so that the second piece is lined up and pushing the first piece, the third is pushing the second, and so on. There should be no gap between the first and last piece. There is probably a limit as to the minimum length, even using this technique. My comfort level is the distance between the in-feed roller and out-feed roller on my Delta DC-380.

[Lee Koepke]

The other way, is to sandwich the small piece between two larger ones. double sided tape if its not stable enough. the two longer ones bridge the rollers while the short one runs thru....

[glenn bradley]

Lee's got it; double tape two long strips to the sides with your victim in the middle of the length.

http://www.woodworkingtips.com/etips/images/etip030711wb.jpg

[Stan Smith]

Lee's got it; double tape two long strips to the sides with your victim in the middle of the length.

http://www.woodworkingtips.com/etips/images/etip030711wb.jpg

Many thanks for the pic. At another site, the showed the short piece stuck, with double sided tape, to a bigger board on the bottom. Somehow, that didn't look safe to me. I had heard of the side boards being used, but those were glued on. I like the idea of using the double sided tape. Looks like a plan, thanks again.

[Anthony Whitesell]

This technique requires the three short pieces be taped or glued together. Just passing them through one behind the other will not help feed short stock.

This method, without the tape, is the trick for preventing snipe.

With tape or glue, is the trick for feeding short stock through the planer.

[David DeCristoforo]

Trapping the short piece between two longer ones (as already suggested) is the trick. But I like to notch the sticks like this (not to scale!):
93387
instead of using tape which may not hold under load.

[Dave Lehnert]

How short are we talking?

[Steve Clardy]

Trapping the short piece between two longer ones (as already suggested) is the trick. But I like to notch the sticks like this (not to scale!):
93387
instead of using tape which may not hold under load.



Ditto. Right on David. I do the same.

I don't like dealing with getting the tape off. That's just another job. Lol

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

It's really planer dependant. Some will lift stock more than others some won't hold the stock as well as others and some will plane short stock just fine.

I run short stuff in my planer all the time and rarely do I have an issue. If I do it's lifting of the lead edge of the board which I can counter by applying a slight lifting pressure on the rear of the board as the stock makes it's way in to the cutter.

[Stan Smith]

Well, I got the stock from my son who is a construction co. project manager. He's always on the lookout for hardwood scraps for his old dad. These are actual 1" thick mahogany pieces left over from some steps in a LV casino. The shortest piece is around 5.5". I'm resawing these on my bandsaw to make rc open boxes from a plan in Wood mag. I'm giving them as Christmas gifts to my family. I may have some left to make some decorative boxes with also. I could use my Jet 10-20 drum sand to remove the saw marks, but I'm concerned that burn marks might be left on this hard mahogany. I guess that I'm dealing with both short and 1/2" thin pieces to run through.

[Stan Smith]

Okay, this is the last post on this from me. I had good luck using the double stick tape to attach small, 1/2" thick stock to a 3/4" piece of ply and run them through my Makita 2012nb planer. I just took off very small amounts at a time. The finish is smooth and there's no snipe. I leave about 3-4" of space at either end of the 3/4" ply piece which is 12" wide. The tape isn't that hard to get off but I have to use a mortice chisel to pry the boards loose.

[Bill White]

I'm with Stan. I use a sled with a rear mounted "stop" and double sided tape. Safe and easy on my older DeWalt planer.
Bill