Power-plane the board down to the marks (Photo 2). Some great ideas to take away and all well and good if you have a garage full of electric kit. I don't get why the box is better than just using say a 3/4in MDF or plywood board by itself? Let the wood sit for a day or two on stickers. In the first photo in step 3, the furthest back corner of the board is resting on the sled box, with all other corners shimmed.
A power hand planer will also do the job. An electric hand planer is good for getting the wood somewhat flat. Thanks very much and best regards!Nilton Tavone. Don't be at all surprized to find that the board moves some more as you work it. Then hand-plane the remainder (Photo 5). (Chamfering the edges down to your cutting line will reduce tear out on the corner edges; alternative methods are to clamp a sacrificial piece of wood to the edge and let it tear out instead of your board, or to plane in from each outside edge.) Please submit links to how-to pages and videos, pictures of beautiful and amazing pieces you made for us to admire, or help you finish. I picked up a bunch of old oak beams recently, and have been using the wood for various projects. We may receive a commission when you use our affiliate links. Flip it over and repeat on the other side. This Instructable is my version of a pretty common board-flattening solution; if you do a bit of search-engine-ing, you'll find several great versions. You may have to repeat the steps to get the whole length of the board flat. A very good idea. Their frustration mounts and their planes end up sitting on a shelf. In order to use the material, I've been splitting the beams in half using my bandsaw. Part 1 of 6, complete. Same over the top (I have an under and over). I figuring (hoping) that the lack of any signifigant warping in any direction will translate in to picture frames that will stay straigth. With some species that have pronounced differences between the outside sap wood and inside heartwood, a giveaway is a piece that has BOTH sap and heart. I use a 16" jack plane, (you could use a cheap #6 which is the same length) and just work diagonally like you were thinking. Correct with the scrub, as necessary. Plane until the planer takes a complete cut over the whole surface, and then flip it doing the other side. Joint a really wide board with your planer using a shop-made sled. are winding sticks important or will a straight edge work ok. Once i got started i realized that the process is not necessarily physically hard. Use the scraper on gnarly grain that gives your smoother a hard time, but be careful not to scrape a dip into the wood. So your 4/4 rough board is now 15/16 thick or you are making rip cuts right on the line and flattening and squaring the edge while removing only 1/32 of wood. Good luck, and have fun! sometimes you can join a local guild and have access to their equipment. Wood is not metal and cannot be machined as if it were. After i plane across the grain to get the cupped side flat, what is the next step? Good luck. Here are four tried-and-true techniques to tackle any size board with confidence.
In my case this was especially important because the middle section of the board was not shimmed, so it was still possible that any extra pressure from the cutter head could have made the board bow downward, resulting in an unflat cupped board. With the 'good' side down, run the board through the planer to get both faces parallel and then run the second edge through the table saw to get the second edge parallel to the first (planed) edge. Check with the straight edge and winding sticks. Better for you to do it by hand, but not essential. You see we are imperfect machines that are bound to interfere with the precision that our tools offer. ", This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google, Hand-cut Dovetails: Transferring tails to tall pin board, Editor's Letter: Technology and the future of woodworking. I assume that the gap to the box allows the oak to flex, but how does this help? Before you start think a bit. "I cut this piece four times and it's still too short. Skewing the plane often helps reduce tear out and makes planing easier. You sometimes can get away with a board that has a big knot or set of knots on one edge or end, because you know you're going to only rip off the good part. Make sure your not just working up a sweat to end up with a board that is unusable. By this time, you should have a roughly flat (length and width) board with no twist and with a lot of troughs in it. The sled is simply a piece of 3/4-in. Just your eyeball. Because I'm being lazy (and don't want to forget anything), this is copied from another thread (my text). What if I were to tell you that hand planing doesn't have to be slow? The top face of the board is now planed using the thickness planer. Add a backerboard to prevent kickbacks. That's what plywood and mdf are for..well, er, vice versa- your woodworking machines were actually developed not for wood as their name implies but isotropic composites like plywood and mdf.Planing this board is not the answer. Check for straight and square to the reference face and to the 2 short edges. Shim the board under the high spots so it wont rock. Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. your orientation is fine i.e cup-side up, hollow facing down, scrub across the grain until the cupped side is reasonably flat, check it regularly with both winding sticks and straight edges as you go (it could be twisted too). Removing the jointer guard is no casual thing; you must take precautions! johnny d, i think you are right about picking better stock. Get complete site access to video workshops, digital plans library, online archive, and more, plus the print magazine. The reason is that almost all of a board's rigidity derives from the surfaces and is increased by the distances between them. Alternately, a plain piece of plywood or MDF could be used as long as it stays perfectly flat and becomes sufficiently rigid when the board to be flattened is affixed to it. Just my opinion. In-depth articles, up-close photography, and detailed illustrations. I have some basic tools (hand saw, jigsaw, chisels, etc) but don't have room for (or money) for a table saw, or thickness planer or jointer. Now place the newly-flat boardface downward, and plane the remaining side. The board is now fastened securely in place using hot glue. That's three planes.Adam. But if every board is unique how can the same rote process applied possibly be efficient. That makes more sense now. Shifting the boards a bit may help blend the grain and hide the joint. 6. Support the board on the sled with shims and double-faced tape. The glue holds the board firmly in place while planing, but is easy to remove once the top face has been planed. Skew the plane so its heel rides on the jointed surface of the board.
The concept is to support the piece well enough in a fixed position that we can send it through the planer and incrementally remove the high spots from the imperfect top face of the board, to create a top face that is one perfectly flat surface. Moreover, you never need to plane across the grain or diagonally and you don't need a vise to hold the board. Rip a wide board into jointer-sized pieces on the bandsaw. A handheld power planer is the key to this technique. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); All fields with . Also, pay attention to the grain direction. Most of them have boards that end up too thin or with tapered sides. dowel set in a hole. However, you can't beat the feeling of satisfaction you get from preparing a cupped or warped piece of timber with hand planes. by the way, i have come to realize that working with hand planes is quite fun. Eyeball a whole bunch of boardsyou'll pick up on which ones are straight and which ones are crooked right away. Flip the board over to the unplaned face and use the scrub plane to plane down almost to the marked reference lines (The bottoms of the troughs should be about 1/16 inch above the cutting line). I used glue and pneumatic brads to fasten all these pieces together as shown. This step is typically done with a separate machine (a jointer), but for boards that are too wide for your jointer (or if you don't have one), the approach shown here can be used. A torsion box that is 2" thick is roughly as rigid as a 2" thick board but much lighter. Now imagine that it is lying on your workbench with the a side facing the floor and the b side facing up. MidnightI'm tending to agree with Adam, that maybe you should also look into how you select lumber in the first place. Make the cut where the grain runs straight on the board.
Is it OK to copy projects from the magazine? The pieces of oak shown here were beefy enough that I was comfortable not shimming along the middle section of the board. Using a table saw, I cut two 60" lengths of 3/8" plywood that were just narrower than the opening of my planer (in my case, the width capacity is 12 1/2", so I made these pieces 12 1/4"). Simple Woodworking Projects. Did you make this project? For a more in depth look of the Spot Planing Technique and instruction on how to build the planing stop I used in this live broadcast, check out my lesson on the same topic. A cupped board should be set convex side up at first to prevent rocking. Share it with us! Power planers are basically small hand held jointers. Realize, in your example, the shorter the board, the thicker it can be when flat. Since you are wanting 4 boards out of a 5' piece, I'd cut the board in half, to make things easier( 5' is at the upper limit of what is easy to plane by hand. Use a set of winding sticks to fine-tune the flatness (Photo 3). This changes the game and makes milling a board by hand not a trial or hard work, but a quick and simple task that teaches you a lot about how that board will behave in all the subsequent steps.
It seems like if you left part of it touching the support and shimmed the high spots, it would be less likely to flex during planing. on Step 8, I have actually tried something similar in the past this looks like a much easier and more precise method.. Great Idea, For all of you wanting to just put it on a flat board the longer you need it the more it will flex. You can use the #5 to plane to rough plane it flat and square to both the reference face and edge -- if the short edge is 4 to 6 or more inches wide; if not, then start with the LA block plane. If you have ever wondered or struggled with creating parallel edges or duplicate sized parts by hand then. The board end closest to the camera was thinner, so it was propped high enough to avoid wasting time and losing tons of material to get the top side flat. No, not really. wider than your jointer, hand-planing is a chore.
This solution above solves the problem. These tools are for the construction trade and are intended for rough work; think fixing a bow in framing lumber so you can hang a door or mount a window.
You can flatten a board in seconds and get your faces flat and square to one another while removing VERY little wood. My boards were all in pretty rough shape as you can see! Saving me some $$$ here. For really wide boards, youll have to abandon stationary machines. Plane marks left by the jack's rounded blade are removed on the outside of the piece with a smooth plane. Remove about 75 percent of the wood you need to take off the first side. When every board is unique following a process to flatten a board by hand makes no sense. but put two rails in each side and youve just built something you could drive you car on and it wont flex. Not designed for accurate depth control, but rather for hogging out wood roughly. This is what the spot planing technique is all about. Commenting has been disabled. Plane the high spots down to the line using a handheld power planer. Use the reference edge and the try/combination square to mark one of the short edges square. In short, every board is unique so doing the same thing to flatten every board is folly. I try to plane and join in the same day for this reason. Gary. 5. After you joint one side, remove the board from the sled and plane the second side normally. All other measurements of square, etc, will come from this face. When the two end sticks are parallel, run a third stick back and forth between the two to check for high areas in the middle. Absent are jarring grain patterns and color changes caused by multiple board glue-ups. SawdustSteve. Try this technique instead: Joint an edge of the board and then rip it on the bandsaw (Photo 6). Enter now for your chance to win more than $2,000 worth of woodworking equipment from Woodpeckers. 4. If it's in the neighborhood of 1" thick when it comes out of the kiln or off the air-dry rick, or off the rack at the board store, and is cupped badly, save that piece for when you need narrow stock that will be ripped off the cupped board, minimizing the variation. Use your combination square or a marking/panel gauge to mark the other (unplaned) long edge to the desired finished width. it might be something to look into. 6 weeks ago, It can be depending on how many boards u need to flatten. Youll find its best to position a cupped board concave side up because its easier to shim around the perimeter than the middle of a board. Depending on the amount of cupping, I may start with a scrub plane with a SLIGHTLY radiused blade just to get rid of most of the main curvature and then go to my longer planes to finish the job. To add on to this, you want to spend more time checking the board with a straightedge than you do actually planing. Fasten a stop at the front of the sled to keep the rollers from pulling the board through without the sled. Select a board face for the reference face. Ill just adapt the way the stock will be fixed to pass through the planer as theyre smaller pieces, but the idea is just that! Joint and plane each board separately; then glue them back together (Photo 7). Leave the board a little thick so it can be planed to finish thickness after the glue dries. American Woodworker July 2006, issue #122. 2 years ago Don't try to plane one face all the way to perfection before working on the other, but rather, try to equalise the stock you're removing from each face at roughly the same time to keep the stresses in balance. Mark the high spots and use the scrub plane to reduce them to the approximate level of the rest of the board. I would look for surfaced wood or find someone locally that has a jointer / planer / tablesaw that will let you use it. Save up to 64% and get a free gift. Come back in a week and it will be cupped more than it is now. Paint Creatively on Your Walls With the Best Masking Tapes for Painting, Transform Your Garage Into a Cozy Workshop With the Best Garage Heaters, Draw Precise Reference Lines Every Time With the Best Marking Gauges, Level up Your Woodworking Skills With the Best Power Saws, Drive and Pull Out Nails Conveniently With the Best Claw Hammers, Keep Your Strikes Precise With the Best Dead Blow Hammers, Work With Ease and Comfort With the Best Cordless Angle Grinder, Make Your Furniture More Durable With the Best Threaded Inserts, The Best Wire Crimping Tools for Electricians and Homeowners, Connect Your Wires Safely With the Best Butt Connectors, 40 Years in the Making: A Timeline of Popular Woodworking. a)b lets say the symbol to the right represents a cupped board. Or rip it now and then edge glue the pieces back together and run the whole glue-up through the planer. I know its not what the 'experts' recommend, but I frequently feed cupped boards straight into my thicknesser, taking light cuts and swapping sides after each pass, and I can produce perfectly flat boards after just half a dozen passes in favourable conditions. Part 2 of 6, complete. 8. What we need is a better way to flatten a board by hand! Check your work frequently. Learn. I've been trying for TWO YEARS to figure a way out of buying a planer AND jointer! I never before knew how to do this. To flatten a board, you need to remove the cupping and any bowing. Its just like cutting a giant rabbet: The uncut portion rides over the rabbeting ledge on your jointer. Reply To minimize grain interruption at the joint, its important to avoid cutting through cathedral patterns. The first board you do by hand will take what seems like an inordinately long time, but with just a little bit of practice, it becomes nearly as fast as -- and often faster than -- putting a board through a jointer, thickness planer, and sanding sequence. Check for twist with the winding sticks. However they need to be tuned up to be of any use in fine woodworking, and even then they are limited in what they can do. Use the LA block plane to clean it up. This allows you to run it thru the planer, A side down (and keeps the planer rollers fromcompressing the cup out of the board, which would result in a still cupped but thinner board). Expect to get a good upper body work out! I just need to do it. This story originally appeared inAmerican Woodworker July 2006, issue #122. is there a local woodworking shop? Being new with this tool, I hadnt realized that the the stock was very slightly thicker in the middle of the lenght of the boards, making either side "rock" to the left or right and never really getting them really flat width-wise. Plane off the high corners, checking with the winding sticks and the straight edge to ensure you are maintaining a true surface. 7. We are delighted to share some of the best AW content here on the PW website. A long plane is needed to straighten the edges. Glue the board together again after it has been jointed and planed. Repeat! In agreemant with Midnight, you might consider planing off a slight amount at a time, and waiting to see if internal stress does something unexpected before you continue. Have you noticed any movement in the board with changes in humidity? Well, I don't have the Engineering answer either. If so, should i start planing across the grain. My boards were all brought to the same thickness and then were ready to be used for other projects. Start your 14-day FREE trial - and get building! It seems the more I learn the more I realize I do not know. Now the board is ready for the planer. You'll run into a lot of issues with a handheld planer. Weve all done this pick up a piece of plywood from the end and it bends like a wet noodle. Dont limit your woodworking to boards that fit on your jointer or planer. I'm not sure what these boards were used for previously, but they have a lot of character! Caution: Secure a temporary acrylic guard over the cutterhead. If there's any chance the board would flex under the planer's cutter head, that would require full support of the board with shims in order to produce a flat top surface coming out of the planer. Do you start by flattening the b side first? So it follows that the less planing we actually do the faster you can get a board flat. As you did for the reference long edge, use the #5 to roughly smooth it down almost to the cutting line, and then use the #7/#8 to make it straight and square to the reference face. It was 4" too wide for my thickness planer and the customer did not want me to cut that much off. Mark any high spots and remove them with light cuts. Copyright text 2022 by The Renaissance Woodworker. Correct as necessary. The net result of all of this is a flat board with very little time spend planing and VERY little actual wood removed. This post is a good example (tho I have reason to believe the poster is a fine woodworker). A card scraper is also handy. Unless you're dealing with some crazy cupping, when removing board-twist at least one corner of the board will likely be able to rest directly on the sled. what do recommend to bring with you when selecting stock, 12 inch straight edge? The gauge is just a 2-in.-thick block with a 5/8-in. Hand planing (rough) lumber to dimension is not hard: Ideally, you need 5 planes: a scrub plane, a #5, a #7 or #8, a #4 or #4-1/2, and a low angle block plane, but you can get away with a #5 and a low angle block plane -- it's just a little harder. Here's another way in case you get tired of hand planing: measure the amount of cup you have in the A side (from the bottom of the valley to the tops of the edges). I seem to be having a simple misunderstanding of the concept. Big, wide boards make my heart race with anticipation. I admire those of you who know to use your handtools to their best and greatest use. 2. This forum post is now archived. 2022 The Taunton Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Mark this face as your reference face.
3 years ago, Ooh! Let the plane do the work -- don't force it. Ah, I see. How does this technique achieve parallel surfaces? To finish the box, I sprayed it with a few coats of spray lacquer, followed by a light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper. Rabbeting a shelf; Strength vs. appearance, Editor's Letter: A new tool with every project. At this time, you should have a board with 2 flat, smooth, and parallel faces, 4 flat and square edges (long edges parallel to each other, as well as short edges parallel to each other, and all 4 edges square to the two faces), and of the required thickness, length, and width, ready for whatever needs to be done next. In this case - the board was shimmed in such a way to get the top side as level as possible to begin with, to reduce the amount of material that needed to be removed. Thank you! You are correct. Next, plane one edge square to the planed face. Finish up with the smooth plane and, as necessary, the scraper. If you can't afford power tools, think about vintage hand planes, a #5 might get you where you want to be; better yet, a #7 and and a #4. Buy a few. Ya its crazy how effective it is. Is rounding the edge of the plane blades recommended? And I avoid the hassle of trying to match boards for a uniform, pleasing appearance.I used to shy away from these beautiful wide boards because I thought I needed an aircraft carrier-sized jointer to flatten them. Two 2" wide strips were then cut from 3/4" plywood. I have a tip: Try putting isopropyl alchohol on the hot glue when you want to debond it.