Woodwork Question

Whatever method you use you're going to have to find a very fine blade indeed, or you'll end up with ( in scale terms ) large chunks missing from your planks. Assuming a fine enough blade, I'd go for the circular saw - though it occurs to me that you might have a problem coping with the slot in the table.

Regards,

That's a good point. Would it work if I made some suitable spacers (or found some washers) and put the blade very close to one edge of the slot -and ,ade sure that was the side the thin bits came off on. How fine is fine?, what should I look for?

Thanks Kevin

I think it's something you'd have to experiment with - I don't use circular saws, so I can't really help.

As regards the blade, I don't know how thin they go but I would have thought that 2mm would be the maximum practical thickness you could work with...much more than that and half your wood is going to end up as sawdust. You might have to look to a slitting saw to get the sort of thin blade you'd need, though I don't know whether you'd be able to mount it on your machine.

You might have more luck doing it on a lathe.

Regards,

I forgot to mention, I use the largest blade I can for thin work (0.5" in my case), as the blade is less prone to wander/vibrate.

Joules

I use a bandsaw for cutting 1mm sheet/strip, from larger stock. You need to carefully align the blade, and possibly use more blade tension than normal to reduce vibration, as that will show as ripple on the surface finish.

I wouldn't want to do anything below 3mm on a circular saw.

Joules

Can you use Balsa ? It's pretty cheap, comes ready cut into small sections and might be stained to look more realistic. You might have to glue it in place to stop it blowing away ..

-adrian

Unless you need vast quantities of these planks why not cut them by hand with a small fine-toothed tenon saw? There will be no ugly tooth marks running across the grain as would happen with a power saw so there will be minimal, if any, sanding afterwards.

Cliff Coggin.

A good circular saw with sharp blade should be able to cut your 4mm or 8mm slices without difficulty, provided you have a reasonable size piece of stock to cut them from, a good rigid fence and it's good timber. I would have no trouble doing that on my (17" blade) saw. Don't try to cut your last inch or so into strips that small, unless your saw table fits very closely around the blade. Ripping that thin slice into narrow strips would be more difficult, a hand saw might (as someone else has said) be the easiest way.

Cheers Tim

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If the table doesn't fit closely around the blade why not run a piece of plywood into the saw? Then attach plywood to table with double side tape. Worked on my little bandsaw but forget who pointed me to that solution.

Henry

Have you looked at the sections of hardwood beading sold in places like B&Q ? They won't give you exactly what you want, but in the ball park to start with. They are probably more machinable too.

Steve

Actually Steve that's exactly what I did last night. I should have started there, although they didn't have exactly what I originally wanted they had some sections close enough for the job. At about £2 for a 3M lenght hardly worth cutting my own up!!

Regards Kevin

PS also noticed 6mmx6mm brass U-section, which I'm sure has a modeling use somewhere

Yep - and also brass angle in similar small sizes. I used that as the basis of a clock case - edged it all with angle & U-section and glazed it with picture glass cut for me by the local picture framers. Worked a treat.

Regards, Tony