“Thicknessing” Timber

[Berenvonbaggins]

Hey all!

As I draw up some plans for a Capaldi build, I'm encountering the problem of wood only stocked in odd dimensions such as 1.5" x 5.5", a fact which is making certain parts of the planning tricky. I have absolutely no experience with woodworking, but luckily you all do! I need a board that is 1-inch thick for the panels. I'd rather not have to settle for slightly shallower/thicker panels if I didn't have to. Is there a good method of sawing a board down it's width to make, say, a 1.5" wide board into 1" wide?

Side note, as you may have noticed, I'm in the US and working in imperial, in case that affects your answer. Thank you!

[Volpone]

Yes.  I'd argue that this is overkill, but I've seen the difference little tweaks can make in making something look awesome. 

What you need is a table saw.  What you want to do is called "ripping."  A table saw has a "ripping fence."  You set it to the depth you want, put your wood against it, and push it through, trimming off the excess. 

Actually a joiner or a planer would be an even better choice but those cost even more than a table saw IIRC. 

All that said, I should touch on nominal -vs- dimensional measurements of timber.  If you go to the lumberyard and buy a 2x4, it is going to be 1.5"x3.5".  The "nominal"--named dimensions are what the wood was before it got processed.  A 1x2 is generally 3/4"x1.5" IIRC.  4x4 is 3.5"x3.5". 

So before you go down a rabbit hole of custom cutting stuff that the set builders almost certainly didn't fiddle around with* (they almost certainly made the plan based on existing lumber dimensions) get out the old tape measure and see if the wood you want to buy doesn't already come in the size you need. 

OK.  Had another look at your post before posting.  If a plan specifies 1" thick, it is almost certainly referring to a board that is actually 3/4" thick.  Nominal is 1".  Actual dimension is 3/4". 

I'm a Yank.  Brits, feel free to correct me if this sounds wrong. 

*This is where we get into the USA -vs- UK again--I have no idea what dimensions the lumber comes in in the UK.  In Olden Dayes, when we both used inches, if a plan was calling for 1x3s, it almost certainly meant .75x2.5s.  Now I can't say for sure. 

[nominal vs dimensional]

[Volpone]

And if you go shopping with a "cut list" it will say you need 16 eight foot 2x4s.  But what it expects you to come back with is 16 eight foot long 1.5x3.5s.  The plan will specify the nominal dimensions, not the actual ones. 

[Rassilons Rod]

Hey all!

As I draw up some plans for a Capaldi build, I'm encountering the problem of wood only stocked in odd dimensions such as 1.5" x 5.5", a fact which is making certain parts of the planning tricky. I have absolutely no experience with woodworking, but luckily you all do! I need a board that is 1-inch thick for the panels. I'd rather not have to settle for slightly shallower/thicker panels if I didn't have to. Is there a good method of sawing a board down it's width to make, say, a 1.5" wide board into 1" wide?

Side note, as you may have noticed, I'm in the US and working in imperial, in case that affects your answer. Thank you!

Well there are a couple of ways of "ripping" the length of wood.

Either you need a good tablesaw, with a fence. Or, if you have one of these:


Then what you need to do is clamp your wood down and use a guide.

This can be done in one or two ways.

1. You can purchase a guide that the saw can slot onto and run along to keep things straight.
2. You can use a long piece of wood (compensating for the space between the blade and the edge of the bed of the saw) clamped into place to keep it straight. This will also work for a jigsaw, but may not be quite as accurate due to the way jigsaws work.

Just for info "Thicknessing" on the other hand is a slightly different thing and would need one of these bad boys.



What you do, is you feed the wood in one end and as you lower the top of the machine with each pass, it sands off an ammount and levels it in line with the bed of the machine. You then need to flip it, if the other side isn't straight.

So, in other words. If you have a of 2x4 of length X. Feeding it in with the 4" side on the bed, you will lose a bit of height off the 2" side.

I don't think this option is what you need, from what you said. But the info is here if you need to come back to it

Also, not to try to make you buy more tools, but from all the videos I've seen online, I understand there are places you can go if you need to have wood thicknessing done for you.

Lastly. I have no connection with Triton, other brands are available

Hope this is helpful

[Berenvonbaggins]

So before you go down a rabbit hole of custom cutting stuff that the set builders almost certainly didn't fiddle around with* (they almost certainly made the plan based on existing lumber dimensions) get out the old tape measure and see if the wood you want to buy doesn't already come in the size you need. 

Thank you for the insight! I've been using TARDISman's Capaldi plans, which are all in metric. I've been converting the measurements into imperial and rounding to reasonable dimensions. Unfortunately, that means I need a 1-inch board, rather than a nominal 1-by-whatever. This is probably a wildly inefficient way of doing it, so if anyone has any better ideas, let me know haha.

Either you need a good tablesaw, with a fence. Or, if you have one of these:

I'm definitely trying to do this on the cheap haha, thought about doing this on a bandsaw though. Maybe not the best method but I reckon it could work as well. I'm just trying to only get the tools I need for sure.

[Rassilons Rod]

I'm definitely trying to do this on the cheap haha, thought about doing this on a bandsaw though. Maybe not the best method but I reckon it could work as well. I'm just trying to only get the tools I need for sure.

Again with a bandsaw, you'll need to set your fence up just right and keep the work piece tight up to it.

The alternative is to just get it close and use a nice sharp plane on a shooting board, although if you're doing pieces for doors or pillars, that's going to be one HELL OF A HUGE shooting board

Good luck!

[Volpone]

Just had another thought:  Tweaking the scale to see if you can get to dimensions of available lumber. 

TARDISman does excellent work and usually provides overlay comparisons to show the accuracy of his research.  I don't recall if he has any actual dimensions to start from or has to rely on known dimensions of other objects (i.e. David Tennant is x tall and his eyes come up to here on the TARDIS so this point must be y high...)  If that's the case, the scale of the virtual models could be slightly off but still match up with screencaps. 

I say all this because I have a hard time believing the BBC scene shop went to the trouble of ripping lumber to special sizes--especially when they had the opportunity to do a realistic police box but instead went the route they did.  I believe they'd use off-the-shelf lumber in standard sizes to keep costs down. 

Of course that's where the USA/UK thing comes in again.  I have no idea what dimensions lumber comes in in the UK.  It may not be the same as the US. 

But maybe increasing/reducing all dimensions by x% would get you to a plan that matches available lumber while still staying at a scale that is likely accurate. 

[Berenvonbaggins]

Excellent idea! I'll give this a shot, maybe that'll do it!

[Berenvonbaggins]

Another thing I just thought of, do wood shops in the UK sell lumber in the same nominal dimensions as the US? i.e. 1x6, 1x4, etc.

[Volpone]

I'm hoping someone will chime in on that.  The tweaking dimensions idea may be a bust, now that I've thought about it.  If you need a 1" dimension and you can only find 1.5", that means it is 33% too large (right?  My math isn't always so hot).  You can't increase the size of a TARDIS by 33%.  (Well, maybe you can.  a 10' tall TARDIS would be a bit over 13'.  A 4' wide TARDIS would be 5' plus.  A bit much, but not crazy.  Although if TARDISman's plans call for a 12' TARDIS... )