How to - Cutting thin Strips

There is often a need to cut relatively thin strips of wood, perhaps a quarter of an inch wide or even less. Thin strips are mainly used for decorative purposes such as for borders, inlays, cock beading and so on.

A sharp saw, preferably a Japanese one or a Gents Saw, is the preferable means for cutting off a thin strip from a larger well clamped piece.

Once several pieces of the approximate size have been cut, the problem lies in getting all the strips to be of equal width, thickness or both. To my knowledge very few woodworkers, except the most proficient, are capable of cutting perfectly matching strips of wood.

Therefore some sort of thicknessing method is required. The best one in my opinion is the one demonstrated by master craftsman Paul Sellers in his video on the subject (available at his website https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com). Another very effective thicknessing jig is demonstrated in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O32Jfg0YpAM.

Paul Sellers' Thicknessing Jig

The Paul Sellers' jig is easy to make and basically consists of just three pieces of wood screwed together to form a channel for a hand plane. Two long strips of wood of the precise thickness to which one wishes to plane strips down to are laid at the bottom of the channel against a small stop. The hand plane then quite easily and very precisely can shave any strip down to the desired thickness.

This is an ingenious device and the only challenge in making it is to precisely thickness the two strips of wood that will act as guides at the bottom of the channel. This would either have to be done carefully and painstakingly by a hand plane or at the table saw.

Two strips at the bottom of the channel act as guides on which the hand plane rides and thereby planes the strip in the middle.

This jig came in handy for planing down three strips of Wenge I had sawn for adding a decorative inlay along the top of one of my dovetail boxes.

Wenge strips for box inlay

I used a router and rebate bit to cut a matching rebate all around the top of the box and then glued on the strips.

Wenge strips glued to rebate on dovetail box

The Wenge inlays are a decorative element but in my experience it is the little touches that greatly enhance even the stodgiest of designs.

Regardless of whether my experiments with Wenge prove successful, I would have acquired the much required skill to confidently cut and use thin strips of wood in my projects.

Postscript:

Our little garden is teeming with yellow and green tailor birds, babblers and squirrels. They make quite a joyous sound especially in the mornings. The other day, however, I was saddened to see a tiny pink hairless creature no larger than an insect breathing its last among the compost at the bottom of one of the trees. On closer inspection I realised it was a baby tailor bird that had slipped out of the flimsy nests its parents construct. There is no way these baby birds can be saved.

The solution, I thought lies in building bird houses. So I built one, a pretty crude one for sure, but a strong and leak proof one. It was made with pieces of hard twisted Pine destined for the firewood pile. I cut rebates and sawed the pieces to ensure the four sides came together well, then glued and screwed them.

The bird house is not symmetric; it is crude but it is extremely strong. I plugged all the gaps with a mixture of epoxy and sawdust and gave the whole thing a coat of water based polyurethane.

We tied it up onto a Ficus tree with the opening facing away from our kitchen window so as to provide its new occupants with a modicum of privacy. Let us hope our tiny friends take to it.

Our bird house

Indranil Banerjie
19 July 2015