On 7/24/2011 7:57 AM, William Bagwell wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2011 10:51:17 -0500, William Bagwell
wrote:
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
Got a lot of helpful replies to this back in January and wanted to update every
one on my glacially slow progress. Ended up grinding 16, 1/4" wide slots in
each jointer knife, two at a time, with a bench grinder. Resulting 1/8" wide
tips do a half way decent job of putting groves in wood which is what I set out
to do. http://alt-config.net/modifiedjointer.html Scroll down for the metal
related stuff.
I feel your pain - I have tried a similar thing for (rehab birds)using a
table saw and making multiple passes. It gets v tedious after a while
but unlike yourself, it's not something that has to be repeated often.
I gather you are making bat houses, a worthwhile endeavor IMO.
Laurie Forbes