Thread: How to get/make thin lumber

This has come up a number of times. exoticwoods.com sells lumber in 1/8" slices & carries all kinds of wood. If you want an oddball size like 3/16", or if you already have some 1/4" wood that you want to shave down, the Stanley Pocket Plane is a fantastic product. The replaceable blade looks more like a rasp than a plane, and cuts cheese grater type slivers instead of big curls like a block plane. But it can hog off a lot of wood with minimal effort, & does not need a lot of force to cut. The body of the tool is long enough that it won't follow the whoop-de-doos in the wood if you've sliced it by hand. Most hardware stores carry the pocket plane for around $8.

I have found the blades to dull fairly quickly but it is a very handy tool. I never tried it for razors. Then again, I never tried sharpening one of the worn blades either. Let's see, do I have a spare hone anywhere?

I apologize.

you have found the Bic disposable of woodworking "planes"

if you insist on using such devices I recommend microplane
Microplane® Woodworking

I'm not saying you need a 300$ plane to make scale stock, only these offer no cause for new hones, and they are far better tools for sheetrockers

Yeah, but it works really well for $8. If you're a dabbler (like me) & not a serious woodworker, the thing is great. If you can plane enough wood for 5 or 6 pairs if scales with one blade that costs a couple of bucks, I think that's perfect. (Utopian, you can't sharpen this blade. It's a disposable piece of sheet steel that looks like a cheese grater).

Those surform style planes can work quite well and there is the low cost buy in. However, a time honored solution does come to mind, popular with model/instrument makers for many years who just can't justify the cost of a thickness sander but want to be able to make accurately machined stock. It's the Drill press safety planer.
It works very well, deals with gnarly grain better than a surform and the issue of trying to hold that thin piece of wood you're working on + it's quite safe to use. All you need is a small drill press to make it work. However, the buy in price is a bit steeper than the Stanley at around $55.00.



Regards

Christian

Originally Posted by kevint

I apologize.

you have found the Bic disposable of woodworking "planes"

if you insist on using such devices I recommend microplane
Microplane® Woodworking

I'm not saying you need a 300$ plane to make scale stock, only these offer no cause for new hones, and they are far better tools for sheetrockers

I felt exactly same way but on some rare occasions, I try to be kind!

Originally Posted by Johnny J

(Utopian, you can't sharpen this blade. It's a disposable piece of sheet steel that looks like a cheese grater).

Hey, at this point, I'm willing to try to sharpen anything--and my cheese grater is good for a BBS shave every time!

Originally Posted by Utopian

I felt exactly same way but on some rare occasions, I try to be kind!

After my first reply to JohnnyJ and the insuing misunderstanding I feel now I can do no evil.

I did not mean to be unkind, just a good humored sarcast.

I was in a similar boat when I first tried lapping on sandpaper, I was very enthusiastic with my initial impression; it wasn't long before I found it to be unusually laborious, and began to miss the sidewalk in front of my old rent house.

With Gob of decent block planes available on ebay, antique, flea markets, I really don't get it.

I do have a couple of microplane rasps and they are far and above the surform in cutting ability. A patternmakers, and/or cabinet makers rasps are really neat to but they dull quickly and are way expensive for "files".

I come from a wood shaving background to straight razor shaving because it seemed like the right thing to do- create and maintain your own cutting edges and use an elegantly beautiful tool to perform historically mundane tasks for delight and joy of the experience.

So, I don't mean to be cynical or elitist I really hope others will take the time to discover wood shaving as joy that adds quality to their projects and opportunity to learn more about their their hones and sharpening.

Kap 0,

That's a neat tool. My cousins who are pattern makers have something like that permanently set up on one of their Bridgeport mills. Thickness to a thousandth

But if one were working with highly figured wood, that same device with a sanding disc on the bottom would work much better: wild grain is better tamed with abrasives than with knives.