: Let me preface this 'idea' by confessing I have almost zero woodworking
: experience! (I ripped enough strips for one boat and it scared me...)

: Instead of having to move the fence after each cut, could some sort of set of
: spacers be used between the fence and the board? Just a few strips of
: plywood, or what have you, each exactly one strip thickness wider than the
: previous spacer.If you had eight spacers, you could make about eight cuts
: before having to adjust the fence...

The idea is sound, and frequently used, in slicing boards from logs. But, when ripping strips you have to make the spacers equal to the size of the strip you want PLUS the width of the kerf, which is the amount that the blade cuts away and turns into sawdust.

Otherwise you will get strips that are too thin.

For example, suppose you have a wide blade that makes a slot (or kerf) 1/8 th inch wide. if you use a spacer that is only 1/8th inch thick then you will have aligned your board so the outside edge of the blade is exactly in line iwth the outside edge of your board. You will chew up 1/8th inch of material from that board, and you won't get any strip at all.

If you use a 1/4 inch spacer with this, you will get 1/8th inch thick strips.

For 1/4 inch strips you would need to use 3/8 inch wide spacers.

This all works fine if you know the EXACT thickness of that kerf, and you can make spacers in the proper size. Otherwise, as you cut more strips from the board your errors compound and the size of your strips will vary considerably.
If you are off by 1/64th of an inch, after 8 strips the error is 8/64, or 1/8th inch -- and that would be half the thickness of a strip ! Not many of us can work to such tight tolerances, so we generally don't use this method.

pgj