Working with Thin Wood Stock
If you create small things from wood, whether they be miniature furniture or small boxes, you are faced with the need to scrape and/or sand the surfaces of the small pieces you’ve cut. So much miniature furniture is ruined by well-meaning miniaturists who hold the piece in their hand and try to sand it either with a small sanding block or with sandpaper in their hand. Both methods result in edges that are rounded over. Sometimes this is simply an esthetic problem but often it causes the imperfect joinery. I thought I’d show you some of the ways in which I hold thin wood when working the faces of small/thin wood pieces.
I cut a lot of thin strips from standard lumber stock using a table saw. I know there are those who believe their table saw provides .001″ accuracy. Mine does not and often I’ll need to fine-tune the thickness of the results. It’s also the case that the surface itself is simply not smooth enough for miniatures work. I fix both of these problems using a heavy card scraper in a simple handle I made. I clamp the stock to my bench using an F-clamp and then pull the scraper over the surface. The result is a surface that is very smooth (smoother than most sanded surfaces) and I can control the thickness of the wood very well as the scraper removes very thin shavings. Notice that there is no sawdust created, which is a plus for this method.
I also have a couple plywood planing stops, one made from 1/8″ luan plywood while the other is 3/8″ baltic birch plywood. They’re easy to make so having them in several thicknesses requires only a few minutes to create. The two pins lock them onto the bench and you can push against, planing, or scraping wood surfaces.
When working with very thin stock I clamp a metal ruler to my bench, using it in the same way as the thicker stops. Here I’m using a thin scraper on a 1:12 scale table top. Why scrape rather than sand? That’s a subject for another blog post but the short answer is that cutting wood fibers creates a much smoother surface than abrading them. The result of scraping is a wood surface that glows.
For really small pieces, the solution is to have a large block covered with sandpaper. I use 150-grit garnet paper on one side and 320-grit Norton 3X on the other. I use this block in two ways.
If I’m doing fine sanding, I’ll use a sanding block with fine sandpaper attached to it (here it’s 320-grit) and the large block holds the piece in place while I sand it with the finer sandpaper. The second way is to slap a small piece of double-sided tape to the piece to be sanded and to it I stick a piece of scrap wood for use as a handle. Then I can push it around on the large block. This is actually my preferred method of sanding which is why I have 320-grit on the backside of my big block.
In conclusion, when working a small wood face there are numerous ways of holding it in place as you work it. All of the methods above will help you maintain nice crisp edges on your pieces.
Cheers — Larry
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[...] had several people ask me about the scraper handle that was shown in my post on working thin stock. This is a tool I madeseveral years ago and it’s starting to show its age. I [...]