Help with strips please

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mrcanoehead
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Location: Saint-Lazare, Quebec, CANADA

Help with strips please

Post by mrcanoehead »

Need a little advice. I have had some strips made for me at the local sawmill and they ended up being both cut with a bandsaw (kinda ruff finish) and they are face grain instead of end grain as I requested. Otherwise they are however knot free and uniform in size. The thickness seems to be about 1/16th to 1/32 too thick.

So here is what I would like advice with.

1) Should I go ahead and try to build (my first build) with face grain?

2) Should I try and plane the strips a little each side to clean them up before routing bead and cove? I was thinking one of those hand held planers 1/32 each side. Or should I try and rout the bead and cove with the strips ruff and just sand after the planking?

I have some close ups of some extra strips from the batch glued together and sanded to 150 grit and wet. There are some other pics under the Nomad build Topic.

Thanks in advance for any advice this is my first build and I am not an experienced woodworker.




[/img]Image

Image
Chuck

"Attitude + Power = Performance"
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Jim Dodd
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by Jim Dodd »

In my experience, face grain strips are flimsy, tend to warp easily, and split when bent very much, as compared to quarter sawn strips.

I see you have quite an investment so far, and it would be expensive to start over again.

I've read that others have built boats with face grain strips, and have been happy with their finished product.

Me, if all I had was a wet noodle to build a boat, I'd try my best to do it.

So my answer is GO FOR IT !!

Uniform strips, are the best ! If they vary in thickness, your bead and cove will be off center.

A way to resolve this, is to mark the face of the your strips before you bead and cove them. ALWAYS keep the marked side either up or down, when you run your strips through the router.

Example: Lets say you keep all of your face marked strips, face marked down while routing.

When you go to strip your hull, keep the marked faces of the strips, next to the forms.

This will leave the inside of your hull the most uniform, making it the easiest to sand and scrape. You will appreciate this later !!!

One last tip. And it's a big one ! When you bead and cove your strips, run them BETWEEN your fence and router bit !
This will make your strips uniform in height. If your strips are 5/8"-3/4" high, set the gap between your router bit and fence at 5/8". They will all be the same.
Image

I apologize for the crudeness of my router set up, but it has put out uniform strips for well over 25 boats. I would however take donations for improving my set up ! HA !Just kidding !


Best of luck !

Jim
Keep your paddle wet and your seat dry!
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Cruiser
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by Cruiser »

What Jim said and ....

If they are too thick, the advice to mark sides would be essential. The router bits are expecting 1/4" planks, if they are thicker, you are going to get a flat spot and gap between planks that you are going to have to sand out. Having to sand out material, from the entire boat, leaves you open to having the boat "wavy" or not uniformly faired.

I would suggest that if you can possibly get them planed to the right thickness (with a thickness planer) before you start, you won't regret that decision.



Brian
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Jim Dodd
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by Jim Dodd »

Good point Brian.
Jim
Keep your paddle wet and your seat dry!
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mrcanoehead
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by mrcanoehead »

Thank you both Jim and Brian.

Jim I appreciate the picture of your router setup as I have a recycled kitchen island counter top as my router table with a Kreg insert plate but no fence yet.

I love the idea of marking the strips on one side and keeping them uniform during the build it makes lots of sense.

As for the thickness planner I'm not familiar with using one. If I bought a hand held planer would that work or do I really need a bench top one that cranks up and down I was looking at a makita or bosch hand held for about 150$ or a Dewalt 735 for like 550$ I always like getting more tools but I suppose I should be reasonable.

Thanks again
Chuck

"Attitude + Power = Performance"
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Glen Smith
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by Glen Smith »

You will need a bench top planer. Canadian Tire have one on sale right now for $250.00.
http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/maste ... Bczfdh0yUk
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mrcanoehead
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by mrcanoehead »

Thanks Glen I'll get myself setup with a proper bench top model and clean the strips up first then.
Chuck

"Attitude + Power = Performance"
Rick in Pender Harbour
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by Rick in Pender Harbour »

Flat sawn strips can look really interesting, especially if you can keep them in order. It will be harder to keep fair when sanding, but once between the glass strength should not be an issue (I hope).
Image
This is a cosine wherry I'm working on, the dark strips are flat sawn, I think they look like ripples on water.
Did the same with a wee lassie canoe, I think it gives something extra to the boat.

Rgds

Rick
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KenC
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by KenC »

You have to be wary of grain-direction when using a plane on flat-sawn strips. In your situation, a thickness sander would actually be better than a thickness planer, but its not a very common home-workshop device. Among planes, the bench-top thickness planer is your best bet , as others have said. But even there, you still have to be careful about grain orientation, or you could get some tear-out. Pay attention to which direction the grain runs, and feed the strips with the "V" pattern in the grain pointing away from the machine.

I didn't have a thickness planer when I started building my Endeavour, and the strips were a little uneven in thickness, so I had challenges with the bead & cove cuts as described upthread. I did get a thickness planer by the time I started on the deck, so stripping the deck turned out to be easier than the hull. But at the end of the day, on the finished product, you can't tell the difference.

Good luck.
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Cruiser
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by Cruiser »

A couple points:
- If you ask around you may find a friend or a friend of a friend that has a thickness planer and may help you out.
- before you start, orient the strips so they all have the grain the same way
- just run your finger along the face of the wood, smooth is with the grain, rough is against the grain
- mark with a simple arrow, stack then with all the arrows going the same way
- also, you don't have to put them straight through the planer, you can put them through slightly angled so that the blade is actually cutting at an angle to the strip edge. The amount you can angle them will be dependent on the length of strips you use though. This helps reduce tear outs.



Brian
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mrcanoehead
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by mrcanoehead »

So I have found a tool rental company with a makita bench top thickness planer that will rent for 30$ a day. I'm going to rent that and give it a shot. I will do my best to keep the grain in the right direction. If that isn't working well the sawmill has a thickness sander they can run it through but thats going to cost me a lot of $$$ in shop time.

I'll update in a week or two when I have the time to run my strips.

Thanks again all for the advise :)
Chuck

"Attitude + Power = Performance"
pwstndrf
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by pwstndrf »

If it's not too late, don't bother to plane the extra stock off the strips. Match them by color and grain. Mark each one with chalk on one side (arrow to indicate grain dir). Then set up your router so the marked side is against the fence. The fence is then spaced @ 1/8 to the center of the cutters. This will leave the marked side tangent to the bead/cove cutter and the excess wood all on one side, opposite the marked side. I made my strips 9/32" thick and left the excess material on the outside of the canoe as I added the strips and the excess material allowed me to fair the hull without thinning the strips.
Hope this helps. :wink

phil w.
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mrcanoehead
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by mrcanoehead »

Thanks for all the replies.

Phil I appreciate your advice with marking the strips and keeping the excess on the outside for fairing.


The tool rental place wasn't working out as it was 30$ for the day plus 70$ required blade replacement fee plus 20$ to have them replace your blades plus tax on all the above.

So.
I've picked up a used mastercraft 12 1/2" thickness planer with in and outfeed tables and on a stand and it has replacement blades still in the package for 100$. I've tried it out quickly on a scrap of 2x4 and it seems to work great with no noticeable nicks in the blades the cut was smooth.

I've got a lot of work for the next two weeks but when im done I'll be cleaning up my strips and post an update.

Baby steps.
Chuck

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pwstndrf
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by pwstndrf »

A couple more tips on making the strips. Assuming you are going to rip them from 1 x 8's or other width cedar planks, I used a 7 1/2" dia x 24 teeth skill saw blade in my 10" table saw to rip them into individual strips. The 7 1/2 dia blade has a narrower kerf (approx. 0.065") and there is less waste. My 10" blades all are approx. 0.125" wide.
Another thing to consider is planning the outside of the strips is not necessary if the strips are oversize as discussed earlier. The fairing of the outside of the stripped hull is a heck of a lot easier and fairing it is going to happen anyway. So the time planing the outside surfaces of the strips is extra time invested for a small gain.
Planing the inside surface on the other hand will make the fairing of the interior surface of the hull a heck of a lot easier and quicker. If you don't plane the strips (I didn't do it) there are "tool Marks" left in the strips surface from the individual carbides which must be sanded smooth or faired. Thus I spent more time and energy fairing the inside of my canoe that I didn't need to do.
One last thing. I set up two 7 1/2 dia blades with an appropriate metal spacer (special made) so they produced an 9/32" (0.281") thick strip. If you do this don't forget to take into account the spacer rests against the blades body plate and the carbides are wider. If you sketch it out you'll see what I am talking about.
With the fence set to the 9/32 to the first blade's carbide edge I generated two strips with each pass. I did this alone with 1 x 8 x 16 ft. cedar boards. A 12' in feed and out feed table were used to support the strips through the set up. Feather boards are necessary on both sides of the blade and in the vertical holding the planks down also.
G'Luck, :tu
phil w.
pwstndrf
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Re: Help with strips please

Post by pwstndrf »

Here's a link to my Photobucket page that shows the table saw set-up for two at a time.

http://s5.photobucket.com/user/pwstndrf ... t=3&page=1

Hope this helps show what I described above.

phil w.
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