Machine for shear-slicing wood

A device for separating a wood block by shearing it into a plurality of sheet-like strips, said device including a plurality of rigidly supported, vertically spaced shearing knives, said knives arranged one behind the other and forming a shearing zone, a wood block supporting base and means for forcing a wood block along said base and past said knives, the improvement in said device comprising:

• a pressure applicator having a friction reducing face for contacting the face of a wood block opposite from said base said face being formed of a plurality of rollers arranged side by side;
• resilient means common to all said rollers urging them against the wood block;
• each of said blades having a cutting edge formed by the intersection of the top face of the blade and a surface inclined upwardly in an upstream direction with respect to the movement of the wood block;
• the cutting edges of each of the blades behind the first blade being disposed in substantially the same vertical plane as the back edge of the blade ahead whereby the vertical space available to be occupied by the wood remains substantially uniform throughout the entire length of the shearing zone.

A head for applying substantially uniform pressure to an object of non-uniform thickness and/or non-uniform resistance to compressive forces being moved beneath while supported on a stationary surface, said head having a top plate and comprising:

• a pair of sides depending from said top plate and each having an inwardly directed flange and defining a workpiece path therebetween;
• a stop wall at one end of said plate, the bottom edge of said stop wall being above the top surface of said flanges;
• a plurality of rodlike small diameter rollers seated on said flanges in side-by-side relationship, each of said rollers being independently rotatable with respect to each adjacent roller;
• a pad of a resiliently compressible elastomeric material compressed between said rollers and said top plate for separately and individually resisting the lifting of said rollers off said flanges, each of said rollers being free to lift a different amount from said flanges in response to differences in thicknesses and compressibility of a workpiece.