"William Bagwell" wrote in message
...
Need shallow grooves in wood, *lots* of shallow grooves in lots of wood.
At
least 48 in each side of dozens of 16 X 24" pieces of plywood and almost
as
many boards grooved on only one side.

Remote possibility this will become a recurring need and I will be able to
afford machinery and or custom tooling to make this easy. For now I'm
doing a
limited run of prototypes and could resort to cutting them one by one with
a
circular saw. Perhaps even two at a time with two blades in a table saw.
But
where is the fun in that?

Have access to an old 6" jointer and think modifying the knives with a
series
of flats leaving a row of cutting tips spaced approximately 1/2" apart
*might*
just work. Cutting at least 12 grooves in one pass.

Looking for ideas that are better than just goobering up a set of jointer
knives with a hand held abrasive blade. Have no free access to a surface
grinder or any machine shop equipment more sophisticated than a worn out
drill-mill combo.

BTW these grooves need to be slightly rough. While I want to avoid
splinters
extremely smooth groves are not what I need or want. Nor do I want any
radius
at the top or bottom of the grooves. This would defeat the whole purpose
of
having grooves for the bats little toenails to grip
--
William

Dang. I started reading and thought, "Gee this is something I can help
with," but by the time I got to the end I realized you had already covered
all my immediate ideas.

Ok... think guitar fret cutting saw. Or similar type gizmo. A rod with
lots of saw blades and spacers mounted on pillow blocks... Make your own
feed and outfeed tables to match, and put a pulley and motor on one end.
You can probably get away with a lighter motor than you might think. You
will only be cutting with the tips (fastest moving part) of the blades and
taking a shallow cut. I suspect a 3/4 - 1 HP motor might allow you to make
up to a 4' cut at a time depending on your spacing, and the surface layer
wood of your ply.

I would make this with a big table with roller conveyors leading off the
table. Add a pair of spring loaded overhead rollers to keep the ply flat as
it passes over the blades. One before and one after. I think for safety
this would need to be a two person job. One feeding halfway, and one
pulling the other half while the first guy gets another sheet ready. I do
not see anyway for one person to do this safely. I suppose you could do it
with push sticks, and pads with handles. I use them all the time for solo
cutting small pieces to keep my hands away from the blade(s).

What kind of production are you talking about this maybe becoming? If the
production volume is high enough it might be more efficient to groove full
sheets of ply at one time, and then cut them down to the smaller size. It
would obviously be easier to handle the smaller pieces, and to make a saw to
groove them.