When you need to put a short piece of wood through the thickness planer, here’s how to eliminate snipe at each end of the workpiece. Cut 1-in.-wide wood strips about 8 in. longer than the workpiece, and glue one strip to each edge, as shown above.

Now run the workpiece through the planer, taking thin cuts until it is the desired thickness. Any snipe will appear at the ends of the strips, not in the workpiece. Use yellow glue. Cyanoacrylate glues (like Hot Stuff) will make a mess of your jointer blades when you clean up the edges after sawing away the strips. This technique works equally well with a jointer.

Roger Russell, Anderson Island, Wash.

Fine Woodworking Magazine, December 2000 No. 145

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