Following the well-written article on page 58 in the May issue (kitchen stools), I need to make the thin (3″ x <1/8″ x 22″) strips that will be laminated to form the curved back (supported by the spindles).
There’s no problem cutting the strips from 1-1/4″ thick wood to a little under 3/16″ on the table saw, but I want a glueable surface. When they go through the planer (on a carrier board) the grain is chipping badly in places on most pieces. The planer knives are sharp and set properly. I’m taking off less than 1/32″ with each pass. The wood is at about 10% MC.
The wood is bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) and has grain that is not particularly straight resulting in chip out. Occasional chipout occurs on thicker stock, but with the thin stock it blows up. The irregularity of the grain makes it hard to feed the piece to minimize the issue.
Is there a technique to get <1/8″ and have a smooth surface?
What can I do better with the current technique? Next time I try I will –
– plane one of the surfaces before cutting on the table saw to reduce the passes through the planer made by the thin stock.
– more carefully select boards for little of no grain deviation
– look for a board with a slight slope of grain so there is a clear feed direction through the planer (too much slope and it will break when bending).
Thanks in advance for suggestions.
Replies
Big leaf is notorious for being quite figured, often a good feature but not so good in your case. It often helps to dampen the surface and skew the piece. At only 3" you can get a good skew, and take light passes. Does your carrier board go through too? I put a stop block on mine so it doesn't. That may work for you.
I put a 1/16" stop on the top front of the carrier board so it gets pulled through with the piece - works well.
I didn't try skewing because the piece will slip off the carrier- good suggestion though, increases the rake angle and give a slicing action. I will make a new carrier similar to the one shown by AJG1942 that can be skewed.
Michael Fortune posted this on Instagram a while back.. This may solve your issue... The only thing I would do differently is make the leading and trailing blocks longer if your planer produces snipe...
https://www.instagram.com/p/CM71oxCjo8r/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CM734DrDjbc/
For some reason my account is being moderate so you may or may not see this..
I did have some chatter at the ends, but I just made the pieces longer and cut off the chatter marks. I also bent the pieces right before planing to try to accomplish what he is doing. When I make a board to skew the feed, I'll put stops at each end. Thanks.
Maybe go with calmer lumber for the interior plies and save the bigleaf for the faces?
I usually use the bandsaw, then the drum sander to final thickness
Thanks, but no room for a drum sander. I'd love to have one.
Same here. Bandsaw then drum sander.
I've never gotten below 3/16 on a thickness planer. The board flutters and gets chewed up by the blades. I've had entire plies get swallowed by the planer. I feed the board in, and nothing comes out the other side.
Sorry, I know a lot of people don't have drum sanders. But it really is the tool for thin stuff.
Try to mount the piece with double side tape onto a thicker carrier when you send it through the planer. Have successfully made 1.5mm thick pieces for laminations this way.
I'd like to avoid taping for reasons mentioned by bilyo. It might help, but even thick boards tear out and chip with this species.
You can try sticking it down to mdf or plywood with double sided tape, but if your surfaces are a bit rough, it might not stick well. You can also stick it down using hot melt glue (work fast). Then use a heat gun to release it. You may then have to clean the glue residue off with solvent and some sanding
If you have a belt sander, you can try making an outrigger to hold the sander level and at a constant distance off the table to do final thicknessing. This is not easy, but doable. Here is a commercially made one for reference:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/324979657499?epid=1066284935&hash=item4baa4c0b1b:g:BUYAAOSw~JhiBmtN&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4DC35jwcmIB7R5%2B%2Bl4SJgZhx%2FK%2BdgPFEZBHB7QelPjLao%2FNxI6h8yCefWe8M%2BR8HT1DEWLsjVyNvGhvJJXOH8Q6LuxQWLcsfS%2FIbZdEOtbtuus8WE3%2B%2FEwk%2FctcMGNG0e5YJMaGK2TdMlI%2Fa8iEE63wDOPtmpaWvcDztaiBeEBksoZc1A%2B3aMLXui3ZvbkvIRnAoMlifr8gHJDtu7rITxbg039mF0sZSRKkg9CKTesz8adOCvUBlU1I4ZmT03mkicvm%2BIo2IE4AoFqWwbJHRa6CLlaA%2FcDzesDrvIHewMFqn%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR5aj_4u1Yg
Clever use of a belt sander. I'd hate to be on the outfeed when a piece gets out of control. I can see fixing the thin piece to a workbench in a cradle and rolling the sander across. Thanks. I'll keep it in mind as a possibility.
Another agree on taping it down on the carrier board, dampening it, and running it through askew. If you do damp the wood, be sure to get those shavings out of your planer.
Yes to elmaduro's and bilyo's double stick tape suggestion especially if you plane one surface before ripping so you get a good stick. I've made 1/8" laminate plies on my Dewalt 735 multiple times without any problem though admittedly not with curly maple.
A good saw blade such as a Freud glue line rip saw will require no further sanding or planing .
His laminates are 3" wide. That's right at the limit of most 10" table saws, and will really bog down the saw.
“[Deleted]”
Based on your suggestion, I looked at this blade. On the blade it said for rip cuts up to 1".
However, on there are multiple blades with this name and I realized that the swage-set blade I use for square bottom cuts is a Freud Rip blade and it said clean cuts up to 2-3/4". It was a huge improvement. I cut all the laminations with only minor burning that I hand-sanded off.
I think with the 3" depth some of the sawdust escapes the gullets and gets between the plate and the wood causing heating. Feeding slower to load the gullets less did seem to help with the Freud blade.
Thanks for the suggestion.
A helical cutterhead does a much better job than straight blades on figured wood.
Planing/jointing one face before slicing is definitely a smart move - only one face to run through the planer.
Before I got a helical cutter head I used a handheld spray bottle to spritz the stock as it fed into the planer. Worked charms on highly figured curly maple, but got really tedious.
Instead of using double stick tape, you can make a vacuum hold-down to put in the planer. This is a a thin box, with sides made of 3/4" stock, top and bottom from 1/8" or 1/4" plywood. The box is about as wide as your laminates and about 6" longer than the bed of your planer. Cut a row of holes or slots across the width to align with the location of the cutterhead of your planer when the box is on the bed. A cleat at bottom front holds the box in place, and you need to drill a hole on the bottom at the other end for the hose from your shop vac. This will keep your thin stock from getting pulled into the cutterhead without all the mess of double stick tape.
I'll try to remember to post photos from the shop tomorrow.
I was doing the cut at 1-1/2", flipping the board end for end and making a second pass. I feel safer with the blade lower and hidden as much as possible and using less force to push the wood. I started doing full depth cuts and the saw handles it (3 hp SawStop). Bigleaf is a soft maple and not that dense.
I worked on this today and got enough good pieces to make one of the stool back parts for practice (photo). I planed one side before sawing. Cut a thinner piece on the saw and used only one pass through the planer. It was a very light pass and I increased the cuts per inch. This got me from 25% good pieces to 50%. Next go I'll make a different carrier as suggested and skew the piece. If that doesn't work well enough, I move on to some of the other suggestion. I only have to cut about 18 good pieces for the three stools.
It may be a few days or week I'll try to post again with my success or failure.
Thank you to everyone for the helpful suggestions.
You have two different problems to address. The first is dealing with figured wood. Dampening the stock, as already suggested, can help. I've used a hand-held spray bottle to spritz the wood as it feeds into the planer. It's a bit messy, but I have had reasonable success with this method. I later replaced the cutterhead with a spiral head with carbide inserts, and this has completely solved the problem for me, even with highly figured curly hard maple.
Your second problem is that thin stock will flutter, as john_c2 describes. You can double stick the stock to a backer, but this is tedious when making a lot of parts, which is always the case with bent laminations. A better solution, if you're going to be doing this regularly, is a vacuum hold-down to put in the planer. I've attached a few photos of one I whipped together in less than an hour. It's a thin box with slots that are located so that when the jig is in the planer the slots are aligned with the cutterhead. A cleat on front bottom keeps it in place, and a hole on the other end is for the hose from my shop vac. I've used this on my DW735 to make 1/16" laminations with consistent results.
(sorry for the repeat, folks, but my previous reply kept appearing to bounce until I posted this one. Not deleting it, because this has the photos).
Wow. That would solve the chatter problem. Easy to make too.
I'll keep this in mind for future projects.
Thanks for sharing this.
Hey I recently made thin strips for a fishing net, the best method I found was making a make shift drum sander out of a spindle sander. It worked surprisingly well, here is a link to a video that shows the set up https://youtu.be/KcDiaxPAjq4 not the best video, but it gives you the general idea. With the curly maple I found that if I tried to take to much of in one pass it would burn. Hope this helps.
Michael Fortune uses a technique for thickness planing thin plies that I've been meaning to try. Check out his video, shortly after the 6 minute mark: https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/chairs-benches-and-stools/episode-2-resawing-thin-plies
It addresses the flutter problem, which happens after the beginning and end of boards, because only one roller is engaged, allowing the cutterhead to lift the board end, chipping and shredding it. It works for Michael Fortune, so it's worth trying.
When the plies get thin enough, under ⅛", the flutter can occur in the middle of the board, even with both rollers engaged.
Sure. But if I could get to 1/8, without the PITA drum sander, I'd be happy. And 1/8 should be enough for most bent laminations.
These trays required 1/16" plys, and even those sometimes were prone to cracking. And since everyone asks, the sides are a single bent lamination. The plys have a slot cut lengthwise in the middle and are bent in two directions.
Interesting. I've never seen that done.
Lifting in and out would certainly help the leading edge from chipping and snipe chipping on the trailing edge. I cut the laminations long to allow for this. It was the chipping in the middle that was the main issue for me. The Oregon maple is difficult to machine.
The next video in the series also looks helpful to me (gluing the lamina in a curved form). I glued one for practice, but the video (which I'll watch tonight) will probably give me some good tips.
Thanks.
How many pieces are we talking about needing? If it's say a dozen or a few dozen, I can see using a hand plane to smooth. Maybe first rip on a band saw then use a hand plane to get the final surface. May not be the preferred method and all depends on what tools you own.
I don't know about the OP. But I do a few hundred at a time, from about 1/8 down to .05" Most are in the .065" to .1" range.
Drum sander.
Yea, if I had that many, it would be a drum sander as well.
Thanks to everyone for their comments.
I ended up using a Freud rip cut blade on the table saw as suggested by gulfstar. I already had the blade but had only used it for square-bottom cuts (swage set teeth). Embarrassingly, I had not thought about it for glueline cuts. It left only minor burning that I could hand sand off. I started with a 90-tooth Diablo which works well for most cuts.
I did try skewing the piece with little improvement. There's just too much grain deviation.
Based on all the comments, it appears that drum sanding (or modifying a belt or spindle sander) would be successful for the figured wood.
athominthewoods suggested a vacuum hold down in the planer which would certainly reduce chatter with less hassle than taping. I'll try this next time if I'm not working with bigleaf maple.
Again, thanks to all.