Tapering the thickness of relatively small pieces of wood

You didn’t spec a tolerance….....so I’ll shoot for .005”(+/-.0025).Would simply rough cut on resaw to a line and finish on a right angle fixture on edge sander…...again,am assuming you just want a cpl.Flyin636

I wish I could claim that I thought of this, but I didn’t. It is based on a post I saw a while ago and cannot find again now.

Assuming that you have a jointer, you could make a jig that holds the wood at the required angle for planing. First an isometric view that doesn’t show you all that much …

and now a side view with the left side removed …

The top is angled as required and the wood is stuck to the top using double-sided tape.

The sides of the jig are sacrificial – they get planed down at the same time as your wood so you need one pair of sides per piece of wood that you are tapering.

Different (I think) to the jig that I have based these sketches on, I have drawn the jig with a backstop so that the double-sided tape only has to hold the wood up, it does not need to prevent it from shearing off. I have drawn the backstop quite large so that you can also use it as a handle and have included a handle at the front. These should both make the jig safer to use.

If you try this and it works, I’m sure everybody would benefit from you doing a blog on the process with the lessons you learn.

-- I may have lost my marbles, but I still have my love of woodworking

Have you considered doing this on the jointer? By carefully setting the leading edge of the piece, on the out feed table, and pushing it through it will create a “taper”. Just be careful!

-- Lew- Time traveler. Purveyor of the world's finest custom rolling pins!

the things that can do this admirably well are hand planes and the band saw, and yes your table saw even with it’s shallow blade height.

The plane and BS are obvious but the TS will require you to make a fixture to hold the piece so that you can flip the piece in the fixture.

To mount the work in the fixture, I’d use what is called a “paper joint” to hold the piece to a fixture so that when you are done. you only need to use a chisel to pop the small glued portion away and tear the paper.
Your fixture might be such that you can remove it flip it and re-mount it to flip the piece.

Then clean it up with the hand plane and sandpaper

-- When the moderator chooses sides, his site sucks.

Well, you have all given me some real good options! Thank you for your time. Since I am not very proficient with the hand plane (I haven’t really gotten my plane all that tuned in yet), I think I will first try the jointer. In fact I just purchased a Ridgid JP06101 6 1/8” jointer on Craigs List. Once I receive my replacement blades, I’ll give it a go! Tootles, your shop drawings are awesome! They made it crystal clear. So, now I’m thinking “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that!” And . . . I WILL be careful.

-- Bobthebuilderinmichigan

for this taper on the jointer
place piece ON the out feed table
(as lew said)
thick end first
(notice other end is marked)
and joint it as many passes this way as needed
(i have a lever action jointer
so raising and lowering it is simple for me)

for safety sake i held it with a hooked hold down
and started the jointer then

the front end is somewhat rippled
(notice mark on back end
is still visible)

so taking a complete light pass normal
will eliminate this
(or you could sand at this point too)

the finished board all clean
and tapered

-- david - only thru kindness can this world be whole . If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. Dan Quayle

David,
Thank you for your very generous help. I will give both methods a try and let you know how it works!

-- Bobthebuilderinmichigan

Handplane?

-- We must guard our enthusiasm as we would our life - James Krenov

Patron’s method looks simpler as it does not require a jig to be made.

BUt if you do still want to try the jig, something occured to me after I shut down last night. It might be a little safer to move the front handle backwards a bit so that your fingers cannot slip down towards the jointer blade. Revised section drawing below:

I’m glad to see that you do have a jointer because the other thought that occured to me was “what if you do not have a jointer?” I had an idea for another jig based on the one above to do the job with a hand plane. Although you don’t need it, I may just sketch it up later and post it for reference by anybody else who finds this forum question later.

-- I may have lost my marbles, but I still have my love of woodworking

In instrument making and repair, I often invert a jack plane with a cambered iron
in my vise. The camber make the cut finer near the edges, deeper in the middle.

Saw to the outside of the line and then work to the line with the inverted
plane. A push block helps prevent sliced off fingertips, but if you are careful
it’s not needed.

Okay, that didn’t take as long as I thought, so here is the suggestion for a jig to plane this by hand. First the isometric view:

Now the front view with hidden detail shown:

Please note that this jig is designed for a right handed person who would plane from right to left. A “leftie” would basically just need to swap the front with the back to get this to work for them.

The wood sits on a base between two stops. No tape required, just gravity. The base is angled as required and fixed between the front and back so that the correct thickness is achieved at each end. The front piece if wood is wider than the back piece (4” vs. 2 1/2”) so that it may be clamped in your vice, the back just sits on the bench surface.

The idea is to use a plane that has a relatively long toe and heel. A Stanley No. 5 is probably fine, but the toe of a no. 4 is probably too short. Rotate the plane to an angle of 45° to the wood grain and rest the heel on the back and the toe on the front (which is also why the hand jig is longer than the jointer jig). Push the plane in line with the grain. Continue until tapered surface is achieved.

One note. I have shown both my jigs being made from wood 3/4” thick. That is not as necessary with the jointer jig – the sides could be 1/8” ply if you wanted. But the front and back of the hand plane jig should be thick. That is so that you can plane right up to the edge of the wood being tapered but can still prevent the blade from shaving away any of the outer edges of the front or back. That means that the jig remains accurate.

Oh, one other thing. The hand jig can be used over and over again. There are no sacrificial parts in it as there are in the jointer jig.

-- I may have lost my marbles, but I still have my love of woodworking

Thank you again for all your help. I’ll let you know how it turns out in the next couple of days!

-- Bobthebuilderinmichigan

My first choice would be a handplane, but I will offer another option to consider.

A belt sander with a relatively course grit can remove a lot of material quickly. I would prefer a stationary belt sander but a hand held will also do the trick.

-- Rich, Cedar Rapids, IA - I'm a woodworker. I don't create beauty, I reveal it.

I found it!

Credit for the ideas behind the jigs above go to KnickKnack in this blog

Thanks mate

-- I may have lost my marbles, but I still have my love of woodworking

Tootles,
I used your jig and it worked like a charm! At first it looked like it may take a long time to make the jig and then take it apart and reset the top piece to plane the second piece (these are two sides of a pendulum clock). But resetting the top piece only took a few minutes and I was off and running on the second side. The workpieces are exactly how they are pictured in the plans. I just hope I don’t screw up the “simpler” pieces now! Thanks for all your help.

Patron,
I would also like to try your method but I’m not understanding how you get the taper. Do you start with most of the workpiece on the outfeed side and create the taper in a stepped fashion until you get to the 1” end and then clean up the “steps” with a singe pass over the whole workpiece? I know I’m slow on the uptake sometimes even with step by step picture instructions! LOL

-- Bobthebuilderinmichigan