Thread: Help for cutting small peices of wood

If you put 4 x 4 mm anywhere near a conventional circular saw you'll end up with a pile of splinters.

The way I would do it is cut 4 mm wide strips of a 25 x 50 mm batten and then cut 2 mm strips of those strips - cutting 2 mm thin strips accurately on a triton worbench will be tricky but with trial and error you should be able to get it.

Cutting such small pieces on the Triton will be an adventure as the slot is too large,one way to do this is raise your saw up through a piece of ply to make a zero tolerance gap around the blade ,tape this to the table,then cut your 2-3-4 mm pieces from a larger block as mentioned earlier.It will take time but you can do it.

ok, thank you, ill probebly fork out money for a plainer, or is there a website supplier that you can order the correct strips? i tried ebay, but all from over seas and the the people wont reply to my mail for postage price

Originally Posted by AllenLennon

Hi all. Im planning on making a scale architecture model of my bedroom, and i tried to look for scaled 2x4 peices of wood, but no luck, so i purchesed 4mmx4mm peices of wood. But need to thin it to make it as close to the correct thickness. I was wondering if there is any way of cutting it down to 1/12th, i dont have a plainer cause they cost too much around here, but i do have a circular saw which i can place it into my triton bench to use as a table saw, is there a way to cut it with that, perhaps a jig i could make up to place the wood in? or would it be better/easier to glue these peices of wood and have the model roughly/pretty close to 1/24th scale?

I would prefer 1/12th scale, well, pretty close to it. its more likely 1/10th, mainly cause i would like to make a full house model and cant have it all to big, as i will be moving sometime this year or next year.

Hi Allen this video on making a jig for a circular saw to cut thin strips may be of some help. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FullQWi2ZwM]Cutting Thin Strips on the Table Saw - YouTube[/ame]
I find a band saw jig is better and simpler to make and use, if you want a some pictures of this jig let me know I am at Port Stephens at moment but can go to the men’s shed and make it there and take some pictures of it
colbra

1. as stated make a zero clearance plate for your saw (see pdf)
2. Glue a small block of wood onto a push block
3. Put ypur piece of wood you want to rip your thin sticks from against the push block and push it over the saw
4. Just repeat until you have enough

At 1/12 scale get a pice of wood 7.5 mm (or 8mm) thick about 600mm long and about 120mm wide or more.

The little block needs to be about 3mm thick so you can cut strips 3.75mm (or 4mm thick. Just adjust the fence to cut off the thickness you want between the push stick and the blade.

See the attached resources

The pdf is a different method but shows how to do the zero clearance plate

Chipman

Chipman...I like your idea better than the pdf file for the simple reason that yours allows you to set the dimension once and rip all the strips to the same dimensions. In the pdf file you'd have to move the fence for each strip cut and would potentially variable thicknesses. I may have to try out your design...thx for the info!

Finewoodworking idea not mine. I had seen a similar setup elswhere but can't remember where. You are right though, it is a really good way to get lots of strips the same size with minimum effort!

Chipman