Thin Stock Planing Sled

Getting ready to make a number of items that require stock being 3/16" thick.

This could probably be done on the Dewalt...but I decided to make a planing sled that was dedicated to this purpose.

Design Ideas and Implementation

Conceptually, I wanted a sled of about ~3/4 inch...MDF or melamine...found a castoff melamine in the shop attic...decided to use it in the beta testing stage.

Grabbed a couple of cutoffs...7/8 inch thick cypress laying around...epoxied it to the melamine.
It was held down by a heavy 2-4-6 block...unfortuately this resulted in some movement of the right angled pieces...
Here is the CTD ready for testing...used some special "double-sided" tape to hold with some thick stock and started planing...before too long I had tape failure...and I did not like the sled on several levels...I tossed it...
So...I decided I wanted a sled that was not as thick, not as wide, not as long, not as heavy...this second CTD was a recycled melmine shelving...I put two pieces of stouter wood...oak...and made them thinner and longer so that the grain pattern was better and I had more surface for the epoxy.
So I grabbed some stock to take down to 3/16 to make the prototype for a folding book stand...hot glued it this time...
So the first run was a planed piece of cypress about 3/8 inch thick...plus an irregular piece that had been resawn and had varying thickness...along with the oak stop blocks that were still a bit proud of 3/16.
Side view of thicnesses...I vowed to make my runs in the planer with much smaller incremental thickness changes...this should help the boards stay attached.
After the pieces are all co-planar at 3/16 inches...pretty pleased at how it went.
Removed boards...chiseled off the glue...and they are ready for further milling...

 

 

 

 

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