Thread: Tiny Wooden Strips

If you have a thicknesser which can take light cuts without leaving roller marks, I would use that along with a table saw, preferably a bandsaw.

I would get a wider board much longer than needed +300mm atleast, say 100mm+ wide and thickness that down to 8mm thick. resawing thick stock to get multiple 8mm thick boards from a single 25mm or 38mm board is a good idea. Now rip those wide 8mm thick boards into ~6mm strips using the tablesaw or bandsaw. Make sure the skinny little strips won't fall into the gap between blade and table on a tablesaw, use a false bottom with zero clearance if needed. Now you have a bunch of strips 8x~6mm overlength by about 300mm. Send the skinny strips into the thicknesser a bunch at a time (how ever many you can wrap your hands around to grip tightly) to thickness down to 5.5mm on one side and then again to 5mm other side. When feeding the skinny strips, the cutter will tend to lift the leading end of the strip up into the cutter and it will chatter and make a lot of noise. This can be reduced by lifting the trailing end of the strips and bending the strips as much as you can without breaking them, but it will still chatter a bit until the strips hit the outfeed roller (hence the overlength 300mm docking length).

to fix them into position, yes use tiny nails but predrill the strips with a drillbit slightly less than the diameter of the nails. hammer in with a hammer almost all of the way, then use a nailpunch to drive them home to sit exactly flush with the surface. you will barely notice they are there.

Thankyou very much for taking the time to reply. Since I do not have a thicknesser I went and had a good hard look at the tablesaw. It has a huge gap beside the blade on one side but if I cut on the other side the gap is better. The blade is offset in the table but that will not matter for the width I need. I am going to offset the blade to reduce the gap even more and take out the end float in the arbour. Mechanical and steel I can deal with. Had a quick tryout on roughly similar wood and the saw actually cut very nicely! If I sand the 10mm edge before cutting each strip I will end up with a sanded face side on the door. I think.
John

The best way to reduce the blade gap is to use a zero-clearance insert. The general idea is to remove the stock insert and replace it with a solid sheet ( e.g. Masonite), with the blade fully retracted. Place a stout piece of timber above the blade position, and raise the running saw to cut a precise hole in the insert. The timber above reduces tearout in the insert.

For bevel cuts, do the same with another solid piece, and label the bevel setting.

Cheers,
Joe

Does the saw have a loose insert plate around it that comes out so you can change blades ? If so, make a wooden one to replace it and while the saw is running raise the saw slowly, and cut through your new insert to make a zero clearance insert . Some saws have wide spaces so a blade when tilted has clearance. with the zero clearance you don't tilt the blade . With one of these you will be cutting small strips and not losing them down the gap.
For 5 x 8 mm lengths . I would try cutting some 60 mm x 8mm strips of what ever , glue the strips back together just at the last 50mm of each end to make a pack of say, 5 strips = a pack 60mm x 40 mm. when dry , re plane a flat square edge to the face and then saw off 5mm strips . cut off the glued ends and they should fall apart at 5 x 8 . If you do them a little thicker so you can plane them , you need to make a little jig for holding them to be planed . Do this by sawing a 8.5 x 5.5 slot in the edge of a plank and glueing a little stop in the last 50mm end of the slot . Put in you over size sticks and trim them down . you will have to play with the sizes to get this working or make two of them to get it working.

Rob

Edit , Like Joe said

Just thinking more about it . if you machine then plane your 8mm strips before glueing , then after glueing plane each edge before sawing off you will have three good sides to each strip. then jig to plane that last edge.

I use this method only with the stop block clamped to the miter gauge. Looking at the video will give a general idea regardless of how you fix the stop block. As said in the video do not cut thin strips between blade and fence. Hope that is some help. By the way I looked at a lot of videos about this and a lot of them did not look safe to me. Not everything on line is the right way to do things.
For 5mm strips I would cut a bit thicker to allow to plane or sand. Plane the board edge before next cut and you only need to plane one side of strip. Then so on and so on.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YpuAZOIj88
Regards
John

Half way through this project but higher priorities and other inconveniences have got in the way. Have cut the thin strips, that part went so well thanks to the advice I got from members here.
I eliminated play from the arbour, then used countersunk screws to fix a piece of ply to the table with the table in the fully raised position and lowered it down so that the blade cut a new slot with minimum clearances. Set up a stop-block as in the video, changed the adjustable guide (fence?) to suit the higher table surface, and just sawed off the strips. The cutting was safe, smooth, and effortless.
Thanks to those who helped me.
John

I would expect louvers to be closer to 5mm x 19mm or so but I'm in the other half of the world.

There are two ways to do this on the table saw. The first way is my preference and probably the safest.

1~ Make a push stick that rides on the fence of the table saw. Make the push stick so that it truly rides the fence and can't skew. The push stick should look like an inverted "U" with a handle. The left side of the push stick is made from ¼ inch (Wrong side of the planet and don't know the metric plywood sizes.) plywood and is the part that contacts the timber being cut. There should be about 1mm of clearance between the push stick and the table. Set the fence to 5mm and the blade to the appropriate height (19mm?). Run the push stick through the saw to cut the plywood to the appropriate thickness. Without changing the saw setup cut your louvers and use the push stick to finish the cut.

2 ~ Buy or make a stop/guide that will fit into the LEFT miter gauge slot. Adjust the stop so that there is a 5mm gap between the stop and the LEFT side of the blade. POSITION THE STOP ABOUT HALFWAY BETWEEN THE OPERATOR SIDE OF THE SAW AND THE BLADE. (This is for safety and very important.) Put the timber on the table and adjust the table saw fence so that it pinches the timber against the above stop. Make your cut with the timber against the fence. You will have to reset the fence for each cut. The ugly part is that as the timber gets narrower you'll still need a push stick of sorts.

Thin Rip Tablesaw Jig - Rockler Woodworking Tools

I have this one and it is better for thin strips over 1m in length.