I have used a bandsaw to rip all my strips. I used my strongback as outfeed table and rigged a 12ft table up for the infeed. Feather boards are critical. to get consistant thickness. The thickness variation was 0.004".

I prefered a smooth finish an even better thickness variation and set up my router as a jointer/planer. Do this at your own risk! You my have a strip flying. It never happened to me. I used at least three feather boards with the router and had plenty of friction with shallow cuts. I never took more than 0.008" off. I used first a jointer setup to get one side smooth and than set it up as a planer to get it to perfect uniform thickness. This worked very well for me. I did also all my thin accent strips that way. To reduce the risk of kickback, I used downhill milling practice, i.e. the strip would be thrown away from you if you stand on the infeed side. It gives also a better finish and I had virtually no tear out.

Again - this is opposite to the text books and you should be very careful trying this at your own risk.

Andreas

: Are there any brands that are particularly good or horrendously bad? What is
: the recommended blade/tooth configuration for ripping strips?