Official Luthiers Forum!

I thought I saw a jig last year for planing and working smaller/thinner wood pieces- now that I want to make it, I can't find the post!
I didn't see it in the jig/fixture section, and no luck on the searches.

Am I crazy or can someone point me in the right direction to find it?

Thanks,

LaurieW

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Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Is this what you're talking about?
http://www.luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10117&t=21181&hilit=+bench+hook

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I didn't mean to say it, but I meant what I said.
http://www.brackettinstruments.com/

For very small and precise parts, I use 'plane jigs'. I'll try to describe it.

Take a flat piece of wood of some handy size, and glue a couple of wooden rails to it, spaced out such that your plane will just run between the rails without binding. Now plane away on the piece. After a few shavings the plane will stop cutting, because it's running on it's sides.

Rout a pocket into the board, and drop a pice of wood into it that sticks up a little. Plane until the tool stops cutting. Repeat with another piece.

If the pocket was nice and clean, and the plane was sharp, the two pieces will be exactly the same thickness, within a few thousands of an inch. If the pocket had some section, such as triangular, the pieces will be triangular, and so on.

This is the technique that was used a hundred years ago to make fly rods. Six pieces of bamboo, equilaterally triangular in section and tapered along their lengths in exact ways, would be glued and bound together with thread to make a section of a fly rod. Each rod was made of several sections. They would be varnished well, but KEEP THEM DRY!

I use this technique to make side grain rosettes, such as the 'interlace' that I use on most of my guitars now. That rosette requires a total of twenty plane jigs, some of which get used several times in the course of making the logs for a rosette. To see how far I could push it, I made maple leaves only 3.5mm square for my 'Autumn' guitar, each of which has 20 pieces in it. I may not do THAT again! The smallest section in the leaf is .7mm on a side, with the grain running diagonally across it. Yes, it makes a difference...

The big trick, if there is one, is figuring out how to break down the final pattern into segments that can be glued together and then trimmed away in another jig to get what you want. After that, it's a matter of making all the jigs as exactly as you can. I start from a 10X life size drawing to get all the measurements and angles. This is 'workmanship of certainty' with hand tools. I found early on that I had to include a glue line allowance (about .05mm/line) or else things would start to jam up when I was assembling the rosette.

The bench hook is what I was thining about.....Alan - I'm still trying to decipher yours! I better read it again....I am kinda thick most days!

Laurie

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Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Thanks Al, great technique!

Here my two low-tech, no-precision approaches:

• When there's no repeatability needed, for very short but relatively "thick" (down to 2mm) pieces I usually use the bench hook together with the biggest plane I have to hold the piece flat down at the beginning of the plane-stroke.
• For really flat pieces I just put a sandpaper on the bench, hold it with two fingers of the left hand, put the piece on top of the right part of the sandpaper and plane it down with a block plane. A few days ago I made some ca. 0.5mm - 0.7mm thin fan struts for a sopranino uke (no consistency in thickness needed, I went for a certain "stiffness" ). Of course, with this technique you have to take care to not tilt the plane, or you'll sand down your plane...

That technique is how it is still done today. As Alan has stated, extreme accuracy is possible with hand tools.

L.

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Cut to size.....Beat to fit.....Paint to match.

Great tips! Thanks guys.

Ed