Good Idea Needed

[JRD]

Folks,

Looking for a few ideas. I'm trying to cut slivers of Black Walnut shells for accent on a planned wood turning. I need them to be about 3/8 thick, flat on each side.

I've tried the only idea I could come up with, feeding them through a scroll saw, holding the nuts with pliers. Because the nuts are not perfectly round, they're hard to feed through to get a straight cut, and I have no intention of getting my fingers any closer to the blade than two inches. Has anyone done this or anything similar?

I've also found the Black Walnut shell is very hard wood, much harder than the wood itself.

 

[toolferone]

I would think about gluing the shells to a larger piece that would be easier to control. Maybe use hot melt glue which you could remove later if needed.

 

[D L Ames]

Ditto the hot glue route. If you need to cut the whole nuts in half first you might try clamping the nut into a wooden handscrew clamp. This would give you a flat surface to place on the table of either your bandsaw or scrollsaw. Once you have the nuts halved use the hot melt glue or maybe even double faced carpet tape to mount them to a thicker piece of stock as mentioned above.

D L

 

[cskipper]

The hot glue sounds like a good idea. I would never have thought of it - one of the things I like about this group! You can actually get really close to a scroll saw blade and be safe but the other's suggestions make more sense.

 

[hpetty]

I was just looking at a small piece jig last night in a WoodSmith book of jigs. The design was for a table saw miter guage but would easily modify for the bandsaw fence. It worked much like a clamp, with two parallel boards in which to place your work. Or maybe a better description would be like some of the taper jigs, but much shorter and with two boards running parallel to each other. the piece you were cutting would be "pinched" between the two parallel boards. I'll be glad to dig out the book tonight, if you don't find a better solution first.

 

[JRD]

Thanks for the ideas.

I'm somewhat hampered doing this because I don't have a bandsaw, just scroll, table and RAS. I'm going to try the glue to another surface idea and see how that goes.

 

[DaveO]

If you don't have good success with your available saws, you are more than welcome to come by and borrow my BS. Good luck.
Dave

 

[Joe Scharle]

I use a hand screw for feeding small parts through my bandsaw. Should work on your SS too. A little pad of carpet tape on each jaw keeps UFOs to a minimum.
Joe