johnelliott
Established Member
Time we big spenders put forward some of our ideas on how to do woodworking tasks without expensive machines.
Here's the first of mine-
When I first started making guitar necks, years ago, I needed to thickness pieces of maple, approximately 900mm long and 100m wide. No money for a planer thicknesser and no space either.
I did have a 1/4 router, though, so this is what I did. Sorry, no pics. I made a table big enough to hold the maple blanks, then attached two pieces of steel to form rails above the level of the wood. Then I mounted the router on another two rails which bridged across the table rails. I fitted a 25mm face cutter to the router
To use the device, I fixed the maple so that the top face was sort of parallel to the table. Then I skated the router to and fro across the wood and skimmed it til it was flat. Then I turned it over and fixed the blank flat to the table. Skim the other side and, if carefully done, one perfectly thicknessed piece of maple!
I would then let the wood settle for a couple of days before the final skims. The results were at least as good as could be obtained with a planer thicknesser
I shall look forward to reading other poster's methods for bypassing the big spending route to woodworking (I realise that we have already had a good many of these eg Tony's thread on modifying circular saws)
John
Here's the first of mine-
When I first started making guitar necks, years ago, I needed to thickness pieces of maple, approximately 900mm long and 100m wide. No money for a planer thicknesser and no space either.
I did have a 1/4 router, though, so this is what I did. Sorry, no pics. I made a table big enough to hold the maple blanks, then attached two pieces of steel to form rails above the level of the wood. Then I mounted the router on another two rails which bridged across the table rails. I fitted a 25mm face cutter to the router
To use the device, I fixed the maple so that the top face was sort of parallel to the table. Then I skated the router to and fro across the wood and skimmed it til it was flat. Then I turned it over and fixed the blank flat to the table. Skim the other side and, if carefully done, one perfectly thicknessed piece of maple!
I would then let the wood settle for a couple of days before the final skims. The results were at least as good as could be obtained with a planer thicknesser
I shall look forward to reading other poster's methods for bypassing the big spending route to woodworking (I realise that we have already had a good many of these eg Tony's thread on modifying circular saws)
John
