Planing jig for thin material

[Cherryville Chuck]

If your planer bed has rollers then planing thin material is a bad idea unless you add an auxiliary bed. One of the best things I've found for that job is a sink cutout from a laminate counter top. Just square it up a bit and screw a cleat to the bottom on the infeed side so that it stays put while you are planing.

[Herb Stoops]

The same applies to a drum sander. Several lifetimes ago when I got my first drum sander, I tried to sand some 1/8" thick material. The suction from the dust collector would suck the platen belt up to the drum and sand all the grit off it. Plus ruin the drum belt after a few passes. This happens before and after the wood goes through. A sled like Chuck shows eliminates that problem, it allows enough height of the drum to keep the platen belt from raising.

On the planer I might add to make sure the lip on the tail end of the sled is thinner than the board so that the screws clear the planer blades. They will want to put small nicks in the blade that will show up on the face of the board as a ridge.
Just saying,
Herb

[DaninVan]

?...I thought that thin ledge went on the bottom of the panel, to stop it from being pulled into the planer?

[Cherryville Chuck]

?...I thought that thin ledge went on the bottom of the panel, to stop it from being pulled into the planer?

Correct. That's how I use it. I choose something with a laminate top because the laminate is slippery enough to allow the feed rollers to pull the material through. You can also spary the laminate with dry lube and sometimes if you've been planing something pitchy like pine or D fir you need to clean the pitch off. WD40 works pretty good for that. It seems too me in the past though I may have done what HErb suggested and let the whole works go through. I hadn't thought about doing something similar to that on a drum sander.

[Herb Stoops]

For odd shaped or angular shaped boards I put rails on the sides for the rollers to grab and pull the sled and piece through too.
I have done Chucks method too on a longer board both forward and aft to give support for pieces going in and coming out of the sander/planer.

HErb