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.

Ran a few proto type shells in March then realized I still needed a bunch more
wood working equipment to build baffles in quantities. Next acquisition will be
a thickness planner since all the rough sawn lumber available locally is too
thick, or varies too much, or involves an expensive set up charge, or... Will
also try next door in the wood working group for help on the planner.

Have a few more metal related ideas I want to try eventually but don't need the
distractions at the moment.

If it works great. I do some wood forming and usually cut relief grooves
using a similar set-up. I built an arbor that allowed me to stack small
saw blades and machine washers. The blades are the ones used with toe
kick saws.

--
Steve W.