Learn 5 different ways to safely make wood wedges and shims. We also show you the unsafe ways you should not use to make wood shims or wedges. These techniques cover the use of power tools and hand tools, so hopefully one of these will work for you with the tools you have. A wedge or shim must be cut parallel to the grain of the wood otherwise it will break across the grain as shown in the video.
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What is the difference between a wood wedge and a wood shim? A wedge is used to drive top pieces a part. Think of the common phrase "driving a wedge between..." A shim is used to take up space between two parts. The doors and windows in your house were installed with shims to level up the window or door casings so they are aligned where the builder wants them to be.
To make wood shims, there are safe ways to do this and unsafe ways. In my opinion, a table saw is not a safe way to cut shims. In the video, I show the forces of the table saw blade on the wood and at the back of the blade, there's a risk that uncontrolled wood can climb up the blade and cause an accident... and no one likes the words "accident" and "table saw" together. All material run through a table saw must be controlled between the blade and the fence, otherwise disasters can happen. If you understand that, then why would you cut a shim and allow that shim to freely float between the blade and the fence/jig?
The safe way to make shims is on a bandsaw. The blade direction is straight down at the table and does't present the risk of throwing material back at your, or even worse, dragging your hand across a moving blade from the uncontrolled material. The key to cutting shims on a bandsaw is to make a 1 degree jig to nest the block into. This can be as simple as cutting a gentle angle in a block of wood or as sophisticated as making an adjustable jig as I show in the video. If using a table saw is your only option for making shims, I encourage you not to take the risk and instead, spend $2-3 for a dozen shims at the hardware store.
To cut wood wedges, I prefer the bandsaw. There are several ways to do this. I use my adjustable wedge cutting jig, but you can also use a miter gauge with some success. I attempted cutting wedges free hand on the end of a board with the bandsaw and with a Japanese hand saw, but neither results worked well for me.
I cut small wedges for repairing through tenons on chairs. To do that, I use a hand plane and a wedge cutting jig I mount in my workbench vice. It's a simple jig that has a pocket for the wood shim I'm making. I simply split off a piece of wood from a 3/4 inch block of Birch, insert it into the jig and start planing. I plane one side smooth and then flip it over to plane down the second side flush with the jig surface. I typically make the wedges in small batches so I have wedges on hand when I need them.
Another way to make a wedge by hand is using a technique that Curtis Buchanan shows in his chair making videos. It's using a small block of wood and a very sharp chisel (you can watch how I get mine to a mirror finish in the video). The technique is to pare away progressively more wood starting from the back and moving forward to make the wedge shape. It's a good technique to use if you only need a few wedges.
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