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Thread: Customary Tool for Making Slots in Wood?

  1. #1
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    Customary Tool for Making Slots in Wood?

    Let's say you want to put a 1/4" wide slot in a small piece of wood, parallel to the edge, 1/4" deep, starting about 1/4" from the edge. What's the best hand tool to use?

    I guess you could call the cut a dado, but it's pretty narrow.

    I can do this pretty easily with a router table or a table saw, although the table saw won't put a really flat bottom in the cut. I assume there has to be a good way to do it with hand tools, since people cut a lot of slots.

    I thought about a router plane, but they don't appear to be made to work well near the edges of things. Most of one side of the plane would hang off the wood. I guess you could fix that by clamping another piece of wood down beside it.
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  2. #2
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    How long a slot?
    Paul

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    Currently my favorite tool for making slots with the grain is a Stanley #50 plane.

    It is smaller than a #45. Mine is kept set up for this operation.

    As Paul asked, the length of the slot makes a difference. For less than 5 or 6" my choice might be a backsaw filed for a rip cut.

    If the work is cross grain, then scoring the edges would be done first. If it is going cross grain, being so close to the edge you may find the wood between the slot and the edge breaks away fairly easy.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
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  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Steve H Graham View Post
    I thought about a router plane, but they don't appear to be made to work well near the edges of things. Most of one side of the plane would hang off the wood. I guess you could fix that by clamping another piece of wood down beside it.
    Hi Steve,
    Lotta ways to do this. As you're hearing, answer depends on how long the groove (i.e., a with the grain slot) needs to be and how much money you're willing to spend for the tool.

    Assuming you're talking about a groove that's less than a couple feet, your router plane idea and approach will work. Be a bit tedious, but it will. You can buy a brand new Small Router Plane for less than $75 or you can MAKE one for just a couple bucks. (See Derek Cohen's site "intheworkshop".)

    Another option is to cut your slot on the tablesaw and then use the router plane to flatten the bottom. I do this whenever I cut grooves or dados on my tablesaw.

    Yet another option is a 1/4" rabbet plane for grooves (make one or buy an old dado plane for $20 and just remove the nicker blade, if you can find one).

    Finally, there are plow planes and old Stanley's like Jim mentioned. My Lee Valley small plow was about $250 IIRC but she cuts every groove I can dream up.

    If you want to cut dados (slots across the grain), I use an old wooden dado plane. You can find them from $30 - $60 from antique dealers.

    Anyway, sorry for the long winded answer. I've spent the last couple years learning and buying the tools to do all this, so it's fresh on my mind. I'm sure someone else will chime in if I've forgotten something or if they know a better way.

    Edit: You can use chisels too.

    Hope it's helpful.
    Fred
    Last edited by Frederick Skelly; 06-21-2015 at 6:57 PM.
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  5. #5
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    Score two lines with a knife and use a sharp mortise chisel.

    Make sure to clamp two pieces of straight grained material
    on either side of the piece you'll keep, to avoid blow out.

    The method I use is to cut the slot first, and then trim the piece to thickness
    with a plane. Thin stock behaves pretty badly, when the sidewalls
    are thinner than the amount of material excavated.

    If you're making more than one of these,
    a router plane, followed by a saw would be my suggested.

    Plane the sawn faces to the precise thickness required.

  6. #6
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    I am increasing my wood vocabulary. Apparently what I want to cut are grooves, since they would be parallel to the grain, apart from the figuring.

    I would really like to make a simple dovetailed box, just so I can say I've made one thing with hand tools. I am thinking of an extremely small project, about 5" by 3" by 1.5". I haven't even conquered cutting the wood yet. Anyway, I would need grooves at the top and bottom of the sides, to hold the bottom and the sliding top of the box.

    I just read that one guy uses a chisel and crosscut saw. He scribes lines, opens them up with a chisel so a saw will slide in them, cuts them to the depth of the desired groove, and then follows with a router plane. So three tools for this small job! It makes me want to cheat and do it on the milling machine, but I suppose that would defeat the purpose.

    I guess I could do it on the table saw and then clean up with a chisel.
    Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of bench.

    I was socially distant before it was cool.

    A little authority corrupts a lot.

  7. #7
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    As you can tell by the varieties of answers, there are many ways to accomplish the groove, but the purpose built tool for the job is the plow plane. You can get old wood ones (mine has a 5/16" wide iron), older metal bodied plow planes such as Stanley, or new manufacture from Lee Valley.

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    Hi Steve,

    I would probably use my Stanley 45, simply because that's the best choice I have. Especially for a small job, or if I just wanted to use strictly hand tools.

    That said, the last set of grooves I cut were for some replacement sliding cabinet shelves for my wife, the existing ones were shot, and I used my table saw. I had to rip for two shelves and then cut grooves for both shelves, as well as cut 4 dados, etc. There was enough to do that the table saw made more sense to me. I had 12 feet of grooves, and also that amount of ripping, etc. Since I had the table saw out anyway, I used it to cut the grooves. I then smoothed up the bottoms with a chisel, if I recall. Same with the dados, cut them with the table saw and then pared the bottoms flat.

    The Stanley 45 is a combination plane, as you know, and can be set up as a plow plane, which is the tool of choice, as Jim, Jim, Steve, and the others have suggested. I don't have a Stanley 50, but from what Jim mentioned above, and what I have seen of them, they are also a combination plane, but because of the size look handier than the 45 that I have. Like the others mentioned, there are lots of way to do this.

    Stew

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    I am thinking of an extremely small project, about 5" by 3" by 1.5". I haven't even conquered cutting the wood yet.
    The easy way to do this is to cut the grooves with a plow plane before cutting the pieces. That would be two grooves in a piece about 16" by 1.5".

    You might want to cut the bottom groove, cut off one end piece and then create the top groove for the sliding lid.

    Of course the length may be a touch longer to allow for dovetails or just cleaning up the ends on a shooting board.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  10. #10
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    Plow plane, or saw and chisel. Use a batten to keep the saw where you want it when you start cutting.
    someone posted a video in the past couple days on making a bench using this technique.
    http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...0-Shaker-Bench
    Paul

  11. #11
    A plow plane, a plow plane or a plow plane.



    Only in very specific circumstances I would choose something else. Like a very short groove, or a groove with stopped ends. The latter is being avoided as much as possible in hand tool work, because it is very cumbersome.

    A router table can do a lot of things, you just need several different kinds of cutters. In the handtool world every job has it's own specific tool.

  12. #12
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    Five plough planes, Kees!!!

    And I thought that you were a minimalist!

    Regards from Perth

    Derek

  13. #13
    I quit collecting them. They take up too much space. But I liked the idea to have an American Stanley, a British Record, a British wooden plow, A German example and a typical Dutch 18th century design (allthough made in the 19th). So I have most grounds covered. Only really missing a Japanese plow in the line up.

  14. #14
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    Steve,
    Do a search in Sawmill Creek (and other places) for "drawer bottom plane"; if you're just making grooves for the top and bottom of a box that are the same distance from the edge, then you're essentially doing "drawer bottom grooves"; you're just doing them at the top and bottom. There are several internet articles on how to make one quickly, and I believe I saw some designs that allow you to just use your 1/4 in chisel as the blade. Number 336 in this old illustration is the cross section of a drawer bottom plane (basically just a fixed-distance plow plane):
    Side-Fillister-20018.jpg

    That will get you started quickly and inexpensively - plus you'll have accomplished two hand tool essentials: building a tool and making a groove. Once you've made a few grooves by hand, though, it will become addictive and you'll want to groove everything - then you can start shopping for a plow plane or combination plane.
    Karl

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kees Heiden View Post
    I quit collecting them. They take up too much space. But I liked the idea to have an American Stanley, a British Record, a British wooden plow, A German example and a typical Dutch 18th century design (allthough made in the 19th). So I have most grounds covered. Only really missing a Japanese plow in the line up.
    Japanese plows are more like a dado plane with a fence. They are sized like chisels rather than one plane with replaceable blades like a plow.
    They are called;
    kikai-shakuri kanna
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