Rescuing good cuttings from a problem board
Bill Tindall, E.Tn.
When we sold lumber customers would tell me how envious they were that I had our whole inventory to choose lumber from for my projects. What they didn’t realize was when we ordered a 1000bdft pack of lumber for resale it usually would contain some lumber with defects that made it difficult to resell. This was the lumber I usually used to make stuff. I became experienced rescuing useful cuttings from problem pieces.
I am building a chest of drawers for son-in-law. It will have early 1700’s frame and panel sides, the frame of which can be seen in the first picture off to the right side. I wanted a showy panel and found a potential source in the board shown in Picture 1. The board was long enough and wide enough and had a spectacular figure, possibly the best I have ever come across. That was the good news. It had been air dried, not thoroughly, then rough planned too much on one side to see what it looked like. I bought it in this condition from someone under some long forgotten circumstance.
This planing picked out divots from each curl as seen in PIC 2.
As it dried more it cupped badly as seen in PIC 3. The planing had left it much thinner than rough 4/4 stock. These are a lot of problems to overcome, but I was motivated by the figure. Because it would be a panel I could tolerate it at ¾” thickness, the edges of the panel will be beveled and two pieces glued together will be wider than the finished width I needed. These factors gave me hope.
First I took the fence and guard off my 8” jointer. I ran the board over the cutter head, convex side down and centered until I got a flat spot, PIC 4.
When the cut became wide enough to exceed the 8” cutter width I hand planed the ridges off the sides, PIC 5. When I got a flat on one side about 9” wide I moved on to the planer. I took light cuts with what had been the convex side (the side just flattened on the jointer) down. When the planer removed enough material to flatten the outside edges of the concave side I turned the board over and took light passes off the convex side. I kept flipping the board over, taking light passes until I had one side cleaned up and the other side nearly cleaned up, or in fact cleaned up. Light passes were essential for I did not what the rollers of my big machine to mash the cup flat as it passed through the machine, only to spring back out again. At this point the boards were ¾”and I quit.
Success. As it turned out I was able to match the planed pieces such that after edge gluing they will make attractive panels with the show side finish planed and the back side less so. Stay tuned to see the panels after glue up.
