Trimming the Height of the Arcade Blank

The finished height of the arcade strip must be exactly the same as the thickness of the keyboard blank – ½” [12.7mm]. The easiest way to trim the strip is to use the planer. Alternatively, if you have access to a drum sander, you can trim the arcade blank close to the final thickness on the tablesaw, and fine tune it on the drum sander. Of course, you can bypass the planer and do all of the trimming on the drum sander. This will take considerably longer, but is much safer as there is little chance of damaging the arcade strip. This is the method I use.

With the bass end of the strip facing you, the bottom edge will be facing down. Set your planer or drum sander for a very light cut – no more than 1/64” [.39mm]. Flip the strip upside down so that what will be the bottom edge of the arcadee strip is facing upward. Run the strip through the planer or drum sander taking the 1/64” [.39mm] from the bottom edge of the strip. Reset the machine lower another 1/64” [.39mm] and plane (or sand) the bottom edge a second time. The goal is to keep planing the bottom edge of the strip until the bottom edge splits the 1/8” [3mm] hole in each arcade. When this is achieved, measure the height of the strip to determine how much the top edge needs to be trimmed to achieve an overall height of ½” [12.7mm]. Trim the top edge of the strip to achieve that overall height. This is what your trimmed arcade strip should look like (partial arcade blank shown).