Cutting Strips

This is my setup for milling strips. I use a Delta Unisaw, with a Freud "Diablo" blade, the fence is the Delta "Unifence". I've got a couple saw horses on the in feed side and a table on the out feed side. I use a Delta power stock feeder to drive the wood and a magnetic feather board to hold the wood against the fence. I don't yet have a good dust collection system so in this case I am using 2 shop vacuums, one drawing from the top and another from the bottom.

In this case I am milling 1/8" thick mahogany strips from a 2" thick plank. Normally I would prefer a thinner (3/4" - 1") plank, but to get enough wood for this particular project I needed the thicker stock. I will later take the 2" wide strips and rip them into narrow strips. I have not yet decided exactly how wide.

The boat I am building will have "book matched" strips so I have a rack set up on saw horses to hold all the strips in order as they come off the board.