Is there a tool for this?

I cut a lot of small pieces of thin wood (square dowel etc) to the same lengths.

Its a bit tedious marking each to length putting it in a vice, sawing to the pencil mark, sanding the excess etc.

I picture a tool that i can set to a length (like a vernier caliper) drop a piece of wood in, tighten and cut off the excess sticking out, against a hard edge with a razor saw, then repeat.

Does such a thing exist or is there a relatively easy solution to put together for someone with only hobby level tools?

I can see how i would make a gig for one specific length that i could put in a vice, but while I might want several matching pieces, the length would change job to job, and that sounds like making as much work as it solves.

Hi Chris,

I believe it could be done with a cutoff saw (chop saw) and set up a piece of scrap wood as a stop on one side of the blade. Butt your piece up to the stop, saw through and repeat.

Ed.

You can make a suitable tool easily. A bench hook with a piece of wood clamped to it to act as a depth stop. No need to over complicate it.

Martin

Total overkill for this but for woodwork the most general purpose saw is the radial arm type. They can rip, cross cut and even used as a panel saw after a fashion - straight edge clamped to the work run along the front of the table.

Add a router attachment and overhead routing is possible as well.

Length stops are easy to add and many don't fetch high used prices. New tends to be a bit different,

John

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The tool is called a Chenier tool, used in jewellery making for the purpose you describe. You would need to check if one would suit your sizes.

Look up jewellery tool suppliers such as: Sutton Tools or Cooksons, etc.

I've put a link in to one so you can see what they look like.

http://www.cooksongold.com/Jewellery-Tools/Special-Joint-Filing-Tool-Chenier-Cutter-prcode-999-597

Edited By V8Eng on 29/12/2016 13:50:03

Get one of the little mitre boxes that they make for the razor saws, clamp a block of wood on it to act as a stop. Butt one end of wood against that and saw through, repeat as needed.

If you want to get sofisticated make an adjustable stop with a thread of known pitch so you can fine tune lengths.

Small parts that are being cut wioth a razor saw as the OP has suggested will just disapear if you put them near a chop saw or radial arm

Hi

It depends on the size but this is used for balsa and dolls house building

**LINK**

regards

Steve

Jason has the simple practical answer. If really needing to churn out large numbers of these cut-offs then back in the day minicraft made a tiny circular saw table with fine toothed blade... good for a few mm thickness of timber. I see that the nearest nowadays is a proxxon table saw but also noted a suggestion that a cheap tile saw - something like this one **LINK**

with the disc cutter swapped out for a saw blade would be ideal. However that depends on being lucky with finding such saw blades that'll fit etc. Hard to tell unless you have acress to the tile cutter first but there may well be a slitting saw to fit.

Here is one with an adjustable stop but easy enough to make something similar to fot other mitre boxes

Tile saws I have used don't have brilliant bearings and you would still need to make an adjustable stop for the sliding mitre gauge.

There is a sort of chop saw available that is supposed to work on small stuff particularly balsa but I don't think it's available in the uk.

I mentioned radial arm due to the mention of sanding to length. Gave me the impression that we were not talking match sticks. All of the Freud fine kerf blades I have used on mine leave an excellent finish. There is no splintering of ends because there should be a groove in the table that was cut by the blade that is fitted. The slot in the fence is cut the same way too.

It might be possible to adapt a proxxon or other make table saw intended for light use. It might split ends though if the fence used isn't backed up with timber. No idea of the finish they achieve but the Amazon reviews will give some idea of what they are used for. The Freud blades should improve table saws - providing the spindle has no end float and runs true.

Maybe some one makes a mitre block for a balsa saw. These will and are used for cutting hardwood.

Split ends can be a bad point with pull saws in mitre blocks etc.

John

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Lots of good ideas here, give the modest scale I need these on, and the size I think power tools are overkill at this stage. Pretty sure I can now put something together that combines the various features I need using several of these as inspiration. Thanks.

I bought a cheapo screwfix tile saw that happily worked through the cuts for some 40 sq yds of large heavy duty floor tile in a herringbone pattern and a 'brick style' pattern of wall tiles over a lot of wall corners and edges before it died... more than paid for itself in time and tiles compared to score and snap or whittling away with pliers. I believe Jason does this sort of stuff professionally but considering the abuse i hurled at the thing compared to mere timber I thought it did well.

Also have a search for mitre trimmer, or mitre guillotine.

There's also hand held versions like this one on ebay as well as ones which use replaceable stanley blades. My cheap and cheerful ones came from Aldi for less than a tenner.

I have also seen hand held plier type ones which have interchangeable anvils to hold round or square materials.

Edited By peak4 on 29/12/2016 15:15:02

I once saw a definition of an engineer as 'a man who can make for a penny what any fool can make for a pound'.

I have to say it but some of the posters on this thread seem to have turned this principle on its head and come up with the most complicated and expensive solutions possible. I'm sure we are all guilty of it some times .

Surely what the bloke needs can be provided , as Martin and Jason above suggest, some sort of depth stop done with a block of wood a g clamp and maybe a mitre box. .

Hi Chris

I believe the Xacto mitre block and saw set will suit your needs, just use a small G clamp on the edge to provide a stop for the length you want, not sure if this is the 3/4" depth saw or the 1" but they do both. Available at your local model shop.

**LINK**

Emgee

Agreed, we get a question how to chop small pieces of dowel and we get 200 different solutions, but that's forums I guess.

I think yours/martins/jasons solutions are probably going to be the no nonsense get the job done territory, but in the spirit of spending yet more money..has he not checked out some of the hobby woodworking machines, I thought there was one in particular that could cut wood into very narrow strips?..Thicknesser?

Michael W

Edited By Michael-w on 29/12/2016 15:59:21

Dispite having a full range of woodworking machines for very small section such as ebony stringing I just nock up a simple miter box.

Basically a scrap of MDF with a rebate cut into it, if you don't have facilities to cut teh rebate then glue two bits together one narrower than the other. Carefully cut your 90, 45 or whatever angle required and then you are ready to go. A scrap clamped into the rebate acts as your stop. If you wanted to print out a scale and stick that to the back of the rebate then you could use that to set the stop.

Use it this way round with a razor saw or the oppoiste way with the Japanese pull saws.

Simples.

Michael a thicknesser will plane timber down to a thickness but once you start to get to 5mm or less then depending on the grain structure it can start spitting lumps of wood out. A drum or belt thickness sander is a better option when you get to 3mm or less which is enough to tidy up the sawn side of home bandsawn veneers.

Edited By JasonB on 29/12/2016 15:57:35

Hi Chris.

It would be interesting to see what sort of tool you make to do the job, perhaps you might put some photos up at a later date?

Thanks. V8.

Edited For spelling.

Edited By V8Eng on 29/12/2016 22:33:07

Well this is what I came up with, from some wood off-cuts, a cheap metal ruler and a small G-clamp.

Basically this gives me the quick and easy measure and cut measure and cut that I couldnt quite find from bought solutions.

The part to the right is a support, as i often cut from a long length of dowel and find the long end can snap off under its own weight at the end of the cut, splintering along the back of the cut piece, this should minimise that.

I have a small mitre box for angle cuts, but I seem to rarely need that. This is it in a small bench vice.

Edited By Chris Bullers on 06/01/2017 17:24:42

Edited By Chris Bullers on 06/01/2017 17:25:22