: I ripped my first 2x10x12' today (after quite a bit of practice on
: scrap), and ran into a few issues.

: My cuts on scrap weren't completely straight once I was handling a
: 12' board, so I decided to do 1/4" cuts and use the planer
: to bring them down to 3/16".

: That is a lot of waste, but if it works for you, then go for it. Are you using a surface planer or jointer planer?

I'd rip the 2x10 or 2x12 into pieces about 9/16 by the thickness of the board (should be 1 1/2") After reducing my big board to these smaller boards I'd then use a surface planer to bring these down to 3/4" x 1 1//2"-- or something close to that. The exact measure doesn't matter as long as they are all the same. asically o would be making 1x2s out of 2x10s, or 2x12s.

I would then rip these into my strips. If I want 3/16 strips I'd cut them 1/32" thicker (7/32") and use the planer to bring them down to 3/16 with two light passes. Any irregularities which were minor I'd eventually sand out after fairing. Any undersized strips would be set aside for paint stirers.

I would expect to get 11 or 12 thin boards from a 2x10, and 2 more from a 2x12. Since I have a lot of boards which are the same size, and a planer, it now makes sense to rip my strips so that they are on the outside of the blade.

Most people set their saws so that the blade is 1/4" from the fence. As they push the wood into the blade the strip is formed between the blade and the fence. For the first half of the cut you have plenty of contact between the board and the fence on the infeed side. But after that point, you start losing control of the board on the outfeed side. After you have cut 10' into a 12' board, you are left with just 2' on the infeed fence (and that goes to zero as you finish the cut), and a heavy board with nothing to keep it going straight on the outfeed side.

It is something like leading a dog by holding its tail.

The big advantage of this method are that you don't need to reset the saw to cut each new strip, so if you CAN control things with kerf splitters, featherboards, long infeed fences, or the straight-arm movement of a championship pool player, then you'll knock out nice strips in record time.

But there is a second way to cut thin strips. In this method you set your saw so that the board runs between the blade and the fence at all time, and the strip comes off of the other side of the blade. Setup on this is a bit more time consuming as you have to do some (simple) math. Depending on the width of your stock you'll have to calculate where you want your fence to sit in relation to the blade. For example, if your stock is 1.5" wide and you want a 1/4' strip, you would set the ence so it was 1.25" from the outside of the blade. After the cut your stock would be 1.25" minus the thickness of the kerf, probably 1.15 to 1.18". Then you move your fence closer and rip the next strip. If you want to skip the math, you can make a gauge or a jig to speed up resetting the fence. This is nothing more than a block of wood which can be placed into the slot in the saw table. It is sized so that it will give a strip of whatever thickness you wish. Pop the jig in the slot, move your board to touch it, slide the fence into place snuggly, lock it down, remove the gauge and go rip another strip from each of your boards. Since this brings the boards out to exactly the same location each time, you probably won't need to change the location of your featherboards.

Most people don't like the second method because it can give some variability to the strip thickness and it is slower, due to the constant changing of the fence position.

But in YOUR case, it might make a good deal of sense. You would be starting with a stack of about a dozen thin boards which are all the same width. We saw to that with the planing-to-same-size before we got to making strips. Set up for making your first strip, then run all 12 of your boards through and you'll have 12 equal strips. Reset juat 3 more times. That gives you about 60 strips. The last dozen may be a bit thicker, (or thinner, depending on the kerf your blade takes) If they are thicker, just get them down to final size with the planer. If thinner, then use them for other projects.

When I rip strips I alternate the ends which I start from. You can also alternate which side runs against the fence. This seems to eliminate problems caused by a build up of errors from one cut to the next.

Hope this helps

PGJ