Thread: How do you thin down your blanks?

I have a stock of 1/8 wood, which is a bit too thick. What's the best and/or easiest way to reduce the thickness a bit? I'm looking at planers and combo belt/disc sanders on craigslist. Hand sanding rock hard exotic woods isn't cutting it.

I had to thin down some micarta and had the same dilemma
So what i did was pin them down to a wooden benchtop with light guage wire that fit the pin holes and file them down.
Worked like a charm
As always YMMV

Mike

A file might be kind of harsh against the grain. I haven't done it yet but belt would be my first try. Will be watching this one....or I might be at it in the next few days as I do have both disk and belt. I did shape some up with a Dremmel and that went well. Just have to keep moving so as not to dig a rut. I used a flap disk there.

I find that when 1/8 material is taken and fully rounded, like on vintage scales, it comes out quite nicely. But just breaking the edges a bit, as seems to be more popular and is certainly less labor intensive, can leave the scales feeling a bit thick. Especially on smaller/lighter/full hollows.

I have seen it done and done very well with a file followed by hand sanding. But that was by a fellow who grew up working with wood (perhaps you remember BKratchmer). Personally, I do the rough rounding with a beltsander, and finish by hand.

I should say, though, that I find it very difficult to get an even thinning effect on a beltstander. Not sure how that is for others.
BKratchmer has a sweet thicknesser in the family shop, but that would be quite a tool for the application.

I use a belt also. But there are some good threads that talk about this stuff with some more user friendly approaches. I have the same troubles as Holli4.

A link: http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ng-planer.html

I would double side tape down the scales to a flat surface, side by side and use coarse sanding paper with a flat sanding block. Sand the two at once to keep them even. There is not that much wood there, It is not that hard to change 1/8 to 3/32 with sand paper. If I lazy fat man like me can do it, it can not be that hard.

I agree with hollrpirating rounding the corners and edges and thinning the ends goes a long way.

Charlie

I rough-shape my wood scales with a jigsaw, then use double-sided tape to stick them together and trim them to final shape on a belt sander. I thin down the ends as well, and shape the whole length, just behind the belt-sander roller. Final shaping, of course, is by hand, but with fairly fine paper on the belt sander I can go pretty far toward final.

I leave the wedge end a little rough until I split the scales, sand the inner sides to their final smooth, then put the wedge in with a screw and nut. I final-sand the wedge and scales together, then take it all apart for finishing. I flatten both the wedge and the wedge ends of the scales on a DMT before the finish and assembly.

Best options:

1. Profile the scale with a file. A nice three-dimensional shape is really the best way to make a scale, anyhow.

2. Hand sand as Charlie suggested.

3. A #4 or #5 standard or high pitch bench plane.

If you're really lucky, you might have access to a wide-belt sander and then you can make a lot of thin stock very, very quickly... but my favorite is still #1.

My word, it is BKratchmer himself!

I use this.



Before, that, I used big bastard files with very coarse teeth.
The kind of thing a farrier would use for rasping down hooves.
Works like a charm.