Splitting thin stock

[LancsRick]

I've got lots of 1" thick hardwood stock. A few narrow pieces have a little curvature on them, but generally they're all in good shape.

Problem is, 1" thick is a big heavy for tinkering. In terms of making it into something more useful, would it work to rip them on edge with my table saw, then use a router sled as a planer to clean up the new face?

None of my local merchants stock thinner hardwood, and it seems incredibly wasteful to buy a 1" thick piece and just get it planed down to half inch or so!

Thanks

 

[custard]

If it's very dry and quarter sawn you might just get away with it, but more likely you'll end up with two pieces of useless banana wood instead of one useable piece. By and large planing equal amounts from both faces is the only safe way of reducing thickness from 1" to 1/2" without ruining the timber. On highly figured or very valuable timber I'll sometimes bandsaw off a veneer from each face, but that's preserving the balance where as ripping through the middle isn't.

 

[MattRoberts]

If you resaw it with a table saw, you're going to lose about 3mm from the saw kerf.

Better to resaw with a band saw so you maintain a much thickness of each 'side' as possible, and this help avoid said bananaing

 

[LancsRick]

That'd be great if I had a bandsaw!

Sounds like I am best off buying thin stock in the first place.

 

[MattRoberts]

Aha. Then yes, you have the following options.

Buy a bandsaw and resaw
Resaw with the tablesaw and lose a bit of material
Thickness 1 inch down and lose a lot of material
Buy thinner stock!

 

[marcros]

i am not sure what you have, but if it is 1" sawn timber, you would lose about 1/4" by planing it anyway. To get it to a 1/2" finished board isn't that wasteful. If it was something rare, then do as custard says and cut a veneer off each side, but for anything native, i wouldnt. If you cut it into 2x 1/2" boards and then plane those up, even being careful you are going to end up with something too thin for most purposes.

1" boards are some funny things. In some ways, I would prefer to buy 1 1/2" sawn, to get a couple of useable and bookmatchable boards from them, or have the option of full 1" finished boards. The trouble with buying inch boards as stock items is that they are limited in what they can be used for.

 

[custard]

i am not sure what you have, but if it is 1" sawn timber, you would lose about 1/4" by planing it anyway. To get it to a 1/2" finished board isn't that wasteful. If it was something rare, then do as custard says and cut a veneer off each side, but for anything native, i wouldnt. If you cut it into 2x 1/2" boards and then plane those up, even being careful you are going to end up with something too thin for most purposes.

1" boards are some funny things. In some ways, I would prefer to buy 1 1/2" sawn, to get a couple of useable and bookmatchable boards from them, or have the option of full 1" finished boards. The trouble with buying inch boards as stock items is that they are limited in what they can be used for.

Interesting point, I guess the reason 1" boards are so widely available is that they're pretty good for planing down to 3/4" or 18mm boards, which in turn is the most common thickness for most furniture components (legs excepted).

In fact because I generally aim to have a point of difference in my furniture compared to the High Street I try my hardest to avoid ever having any components that are 3/4" or 18mm thick, instead I'll usually aim for 15mm or 21mm. It might not sound a big difference, but you'd be surprised how fresh and interesting it makes a piece of furniture look.

 

[sundaytrucker]

In fact because I generally aim to have a point of difference in my furniture compared to the High Street I try my hardest to avoid ever having any components that are 3/4" or 18mm thick, instead I'll usually aim for 15mm or 21mm. It might not sound a big difference, but you'd be surprised how fresh and interesting it makes a piece of furniture look.

I may steal that idea as I am currently building what most would consider a pretty dull desk with a top that was going to be 18mm plus the veneers . Thanks.

 

[paulrockliffe]

If you buy a 1/2" board, the timber yard will plane down a 1" board and charge you for a 1" board, so it's just as wasteful. Might be better for you though as cutting it with a table saw won't be easy or fun and then planing it up with a router will be a pain.

If you were doing this with a router and the board wasn't more than 70mm wide, it would work better using a router table with an offset fence, which would give you a planer on it's side in effect.

 

[LancsRick]

Thanks guys, loads of interesting points in here. The stock I've got is already PAR.

Sounds like my best plan is buying thicker boards from somewhere (e.g. 1.5") and have them sawn and planed into two thinner boards. At least that way I'm not paying for waste, even with a machining charge.

Might go on a timber merchant mooch at the weekend....

 

[Woodcrafts]

You don't say how wide the boards are. Splitting them on a tablesaw could be inherently dangerous as if they are wider than the maximum depth of cut of your saw blade they would need to be cut in two passes, and this would mean removing the crown guard and possibly the riving knife (or at least dropping the riving knife so that its top is below the level of the saw-blade. Not recommended!

 

[MattRoberts]

You don't say how wide the boards are. Splitting them on a tablesaw could be inherently dangerous as if they are wider than the maximum depth of cut of your saw blade they would need to be cut in two passes, and this would mean removing the crown guard and possibly the riving knife (or at least dropping the riving knife so that its top is below the level of the saw-blade. Not recommended!

That's a bit overly cautious. I never even put my blade guard on, and I dropped the riving knife below the blade height from day 1 - there's no reason for it to be higher