Best way to cut board on edge?

[elanjacobs]

ya gotta save those pennies using up the burn pile!

The burn bags at work make me want to cry sometimes, I'm quite sure some of them have at least a hundred bucks inside

[Enfield Guy]

The burn bags at work make me want to cry sometimes, I'm quite sure some of them have at least a hundred bucks inside

Probably way, way more than that. depends on what you make. 90x 40x 10 is worth $18.00 retail to me.

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

Last year I took home 2m^3 of Oz Red Cedar in burn bags from the joinery... for kindling. Mixed in with it was a smattering of PNG Rosewood, Tallow wood & Rose Mahogany amongst others.

A goodly proportion of it ended up in my racks...

[elanjacobs]

Probably way, way more than that. depends on what you make. 90x 40x 10 is worth $18.00 retail to me.

Hooooooooly crap that's half a million per cube

[Fumbler]

You flatter me - I didn't calculate anything - he said it was 6 degrees (not that I couldn't have worked it out you understand!)

no, wouldn't dream of doubting a fellow woodies intelligence, its me that's the doofus, I didn't see that last bit in the comment (6deg would be the go)

[Chief Tiff]

+1 for the bandsaw. A well set up bandsaw with a sharp resaw blade would breeze through that job with only 1/2mm or so to clean up on the cut face.

The thicknesser idea is a good one but it would be a case of 30 minutes of work constructing a suitable jig followed by 3 minutes of work using it.

[Gogomit]

I did this a few years ago for a special "Robo-Soccer field" for a robotic game. The edges were 16mm and tapered towards the middle of the table to about 1mm, so the ball would roll into the centre when it is "Kicked" to the outer edges. the table was 2m long X 1.5 wide.

I used a Router mounted on a pair of rails that allowed it to be pushed / Slid up and down the length. The taper was over 400mm, so I would move the router laterally the width of the cutter for each pass. The rails kept the router a set height above the wood and parallel. I mounted the board (MDF) with a piece along one edge to lift it 15mm. The angle was 15mm o0ver 400mm. The client was delighted and so was I.

Regards
Gogomit

[Mobyturns]

Joe use your thicknesser.

1. Work out grain orientation in the work piece and preferred face, direction of travel through the thicknesser.
2. Support your board on its face, preferred face down, by employing a sled made from reject 19mm MDF with a "skid" glued under one side to raise it the difference in thickness between sides of your work piece (no math method).
3. Place some reasonable length scrap pine offcuts at each end to reduce snipe on the work piece.
4. Hot melt glue the edges of workpiece and snipe protection scraps to the sled.
5. Clamp a couple of temporary 19mm 42x19 rails (or similar) on the platen of your thicknesser from infeed to outfeed tables to guide the sled through and prevent rotation of the sled through the thicknesser.
6. Set the thicknesser high then skim a mm or so at a time until desired profile is achieved.
7. Cut away bulk of the hot melt glue and clean up.

Easy peasy. This way your work piece remains fully supported by the sled which is solid enough to prevent bowing, cupping etc. and is long enough to handle safely. A similar setup can be employed to make a vertical bandsaw sled if you have a well setup BS that cuts true. If you have the luxury of wider board stock and require more than one item cut a pseudo "book-matched pair" from a 30mm board using the vertical bandsaw sled, less waste that way. Most sawmills used a similar process to cut the wedge shaped NSO weather boards back in the '60's & '70's in Cairns at least

I often joint and thickness some small work pieces of high value timbers either through the thicknesser or by hand plane, depending upon size, machinability etc., using similar setups. Not keen on using that setup on a jointer though.

[ian]

Joe use your thicknesser.

1. Work out grain orientation in the work piece and preferred face, direction of travel through the thicknesser.
2. Support your board on its face, preferred face down, by employing a sled made from reject 19mm MDF with a "skid" glued under one side to raise it the difference in thickness between sides of your work piece (no math method).
3. Place some reasonable length scrap pine offcuts at each end to reduce snipe on the work piece.
4. Hot melt glue the edges of workpiece and snipe protection scraps to the sled.
5. Clamp a couple of temporary 19mm 42x19 rails (or similar) on the platen of your thicknesser from infeed to outfeed tables to guide the sled through and prevent rotation of the sled through the thicknesser.
6. Set the thicknesser high then skim a mm or so at a time until desired profile is achieved.
7. Cut away bulk of the hot melt glue and clean up.

Easy peasy. This way your work piece remains fully supported by the sled which is solid enough to prevent bowing, cupping etc. and is long enough to handle safely. A similar setup can be employed to make a vertical bandsaw sled if you have a well setup BS that cuts true. If you have the luxury of wider board stock and require more than one item cut a pseudo "book-matched pair" from a 30mm board using the vertical bandsaw sled, less waste that way. Most sawmills used a similar process to cut the wedge shaped NSO weather boards back in the '60's & '70's in Cairns at least

I often joint and thickness some small work pieces of high value timbers either through the thicknesser or by hand plane, depending upon size, machinability etc., using similar setups. Not keen on using that setup on a jointer though.

like this

[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

He doesn't say which way the wedge should run... if it's from side to side (over the 140mm) then a thicky is the way I'd go if I was doing it at home and had the leisure of the time to set it up. (In a production environment, then flip it through a TS at 6deg tilt, seperate on a BS and clean up by hand. Time is money!)

If the wedge tapers from end to end, over the 300mm, then he really, really needs sacrifical pieces at each side of the same height as the highest part of the blank, just to give the feed rollers traction to mill it safely. Only good for milling *one* piece.

[Dengue]

Thanks for the pic, Kuffy, but I would still have to make a jig with an angled cut the same as the finished board I want. At this stage, once I get over this damn bronchitis, I am looking to make a sled with one edge raised 15mm by a strip of timber running its length and then sit the workpiece on top of that. The idea of a lip to stop the workpiece sliding off is excellent, but I would be adding some double sided tape between the workpiece and the sled too

[Kuffy]

yeah. the pic I posted was lifted off the internet. it took me about 3 minutes to find that pic, and then I searched for another few minutes looking for a better one. I would be doing as you plan, a sheet of MDF with a lip screwed to one side, and a packer on the other side to create the angle. The only thing you need to be careful about is making sure the high side isn't so high that the feed rollers will touch it.

[Mobyturns]

….. I need to cut it diagonally on edge so that I am left with a long wedge shape 300L x 140W with one edge being 20mm thick and the opposite edge being 5mm thick. …..

That pretty much tells me the wedge is across the board as opposed to "on end" or "along the length."

[ian]

Joe use your thicknesser.

1. Work out grain orientation in the work piece and preferred face, direction of travel through the thicknesser.
2. Support your board on its face, preferred face down, by employing a sled made from reject 19mm MDF with a "skid" glued under one side to raise it the difference in thickness between sides of your work piece (no math method).
3. Place some reasonable length scrap pine offcuts at each end to reduce snipe on the work piece.
4. Hot melt glue the edges of workpiece and snipe protection scraps to the sled.
5. Clamp a couple of temporary 19mm 42x19 rails (or similar) on the platen of your thicknesser from infeed to outfeed tables to guide the sled through and prevent rotation of the sled through the thicknesser.
6. Set the thicknesser high then skim a mm or so at a time until desired profile is achieved.
7. Cut away bulk of the hot melt glue and clean up.

Easy peasy. This way your work piece remains fully supported by the sled which is solid enough to prevent bowing, cupping etc. and is long enough to handle safely. A similar setup can be employed to make a vertical bandsaw sled if you have a well setup BS that cuts true. If you have the luxury of wider board stock and require more than one item cut a pseudo "book-matched pair" from a 30mm board using the vertical bandsaw sled, less waste that way. Most sawmills used a similar process to cut the wedge shaped NSO weather boards back in the '60's & '70's in Cairns at least

I often joint and thickness some small work pieces of high value timbers either through the thicknesser or by hand plane, depending upon size, machinability etc., using similar setups. Not keen on using that setup on a jointer though.

here you go, a diagram of what Moby is describing.

I suggest you make the sled and attached fences about 450 mm long and use scraps to locate the work piece in the center of the sled.
Use painters' tape or similar as shims to sneak-up on the required angle.
Run the sled through the thicky a few times till the side fences and feet are at the correct angle.

[Mobyturns]

thicknesser wedge sled.pdf

You have over complicated it if your sketch is a view through the thicknesser from infeed entry - only requires the backing board and one strip, the RHS inner in your diagram. The backing board / sled only needs to be 10mm or so wider than the work piece and approx. 200mm longer for the end snipe protection waste blocks. Run a "fillet" of hot melt glue along the sides of the work piece to the sled.

The battens I mentioned, I clamp them flat on face to the infeed and outfeed tables to prevent the sled & workpiece rotating as it passes through the thicknesser. The alignment battens do not get cut by the cutter head and are fixed. I find that when using the thicknesser to create the wedge profile it tends to rotate due to the cutting action / force on one side.

The rotation I mention is about a vertical axis i.e. the nose and tail of the board & sled track through on different paths - not good as the cutter head can violently spin a short workpiece in this scenario and do a lot of damage. That's why you don't feed "shorts" through a thicknesser, they must be at least as long as the distance between the pressure rollers plus a safety margin - or they are "unsupported" for a part of their passage through the thicknesser.

The sketch will work, just a lot more work. Certainly a good idea to use the extra strips for narrow stock, but wider stock stays flat on the infeed. We used this method on house repairs to create small runs of machined weather board cladding when the profile was no longer available as a stock line & the cost of setup to high to use a wood machinist's services. Rough sawn weatherboards were far more difficult to reproduce a faithful copy.

The sled is only required for short work pieces. When machining long lengths the "ramp" passes the whole way through the thicknesser and is attached to the infeed and outfeed tables and does not move - it becomes an inclined platen bed that the stock boards pass over. Since MDF came along it is much easier to use as ply ramps required a little "lubrication" to have the boards pass over freely.

WARNING - only use this setup for boards with the grain running longitudinally through the thicknesser! DO NOT pass boards through with the grain running across the direction of travel through the thicknesser. DO NOT use mechanical fasteners to secure the work piece or snipe protection scraps.