Squaring and flattening wood

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Jonathan Kaplan (OR)

>The technique you describe -- scrub plane to flatten, lunchbox planer to smooth, will work fine. It will be about as fast as using an electric jointer, and have the advantage that you can do it to wide-ish boards (up to your planer, which is almost always wider than your jointer, unless you have $$$$$ and tons of space)...

But once you've got one face of the board flat, why not get it mostly smooth w/ handplanes, scribe a line around it, and flatten the other side parallel, then finish it off w/ a smooth plane? Even less space / money / noise than the combo, and the finish you want...

(I must admit though that when I've a big stack of wood to dimension, I do tend to use my nasty electric planer as above to speed things up, but I don't enjoy it much...)

Best,

jk

One opinion

Wiley Horne--Glendora CA

>Hi Patrick,

I use a lot of roughsawn lumber, and am getting along fine with a lunchbox planer and handplanes. I enjoy flattening one side by hand, but I don't want to hand-thickness the boards, at least on a large project. So I put the offside through a thickness planer, but don't take it to finish thickness in one milling session. Instead, let the lumber acclimate after the first planing/ milling, and then do a second iteration. BTW, I don't think precision thicknessing is important if you're going to do hand joinery, it's just that handplaning one side of the boards is how much manual wood preparation I like to do. YMMV.

Edge jointing is so enjoyable that I like to do all of it by hand, and use a roughing jack to do the initial work on roughsawn.

Wiley

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Charles

>Scrub planes are cheap. Buy an ECE wooden one for $70 or so. You'll be glad you did. The hardest thing to get used to is how FAST material is removed. Be careful, it's very easy to end up under desired thickness.

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Jim in Burlington Ontario

>I haven't scrubbed anything yet but really if you plan on building a piece of casework that uses a 120 bf how long will it take to do by hand. Portable planer and small jointer gets my vote.

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>I've used fairly large jointers and planers in Austin CC classes, and find jointers truly unnecessary, it's just too easy to joint with a long plane, easier to sharpen the blade, no tricky table and blade adjustments required. And, it's easier/possible to make the joint sprung. As to face jointing, this is a real pleasure to do by hand.

As to planers, it is incredibly boring feeding the piece time after time, taking a tiny bit off at each pass, half the time getting snipe which requires that I make the piece 3"-4" longer than needed. And all that mess and noise, ugh. Maybe an industrial width planer would be nice for levelling table top sized glue ups.

Pam

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

maurice

>Dust collection. This may or may not figure into Patrick's decision of planers but it has crossed my mind when considering the hand plane/thickness planer option. Right now my only power tools are a router and circular saw so my DC consists of a broom and dustpan. Would an average shop vac <$100 be sufficient with this type of planer?

BTW - I second the recommendation of the ECE scrub. I've had mine since Xmas a really like it.

TIA

maurice

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX

>Yes, probably should have mentioned it, but ACC had a great dust collection system; and still the dust choked me up on occasion, especially walnut. My power tools (band saw, tiny table saw, small lathe, small drill press) live outside right now, so there's plenty of fresh air swirling about, no dust problems at all.

Pam

Re: One opinion

Darrell in Oakville

>Sounds like Wiley and I share the same shop ;^)

I use the portable thickness planer when I have a lot of stock to prepare, but for one board I'll just use the hand planes. And I can use the planes at night when The Kidz are asleep!

Darrell

Wood Hoarder, Blade Sharpener, and Occasional Tool User

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Brent Langdon, Sterling VA

>> Would an average shop vac <$100 be sufficient with this type of planer?

Probably. I have a tiny shop vac that I use with my planner and it is not enough to clear the chips (though it works great with my table saw). I had to laugh. I just looked at that label: "Quiet Super Power, 2.25 peak horse power". Now there is some creative marketing! I would think that a bigger vac would do fine, but might be even louder than mine.

- Brent

Scrub Plane Question

Brent Langdon, Sterling VA

>Is a scrub plane normally used for flattening reasonably flat boards before thicknessing with a power planer? I was under the impression that a scrub plane was most useful during the thicknessing steps where you might have to remove 1/4" or more material.

I have been checking www.robcosman.com, but I have not seen any signs of Rob's new video on squaring lumber. Sounds exactly like what I need.

- Brent

Re: Squaring and flattening wood (long)

glh

>I have a 2 car garage shop during the day and a little over 1/2 of a 2 car garage shop at night (my wife demands it), and I've over loaded myself with machinery (DeWalt 52" fence system contractors' saw, 14" Jet bandsaw, Ridgid drill press, 6" Delta jointer, 13" Ridgid planer, and a router table. In addition, I have a 6'6" long work bench on Geoffry Noden's Adjusta bench legs with castners. (I mention that because this is a great all around bench system.) All the other machinery is on mobile bases. I also have a decent stock of handplanes and am planning to sell my jointer and perhaps my planer.

The jointer is easy. I can do a better job (jointing an edge) with my handplane than on the jointer anyway. The only part that concerns me is the flattening. I can get things reasonably flat on one side with a handplane, but it does take longer than with the jointer. However, there are a couple of problems with the jointer. First, a 6" jointer is not as useful as a larger one. Most of the boards I buy are from 4" to 10" wide, typically 6" to 8". That means I have to rip the boards before I can run them across the jointer with a reasonable degree of safety. A 7" board suddenly becomes about 2 3" boards after ripping and jointing--okay from rails and stiles but narrower than desired for most other things. I either end up with a lot of narrow pieces or a lot of waste, which gets expensive. I don't have the space, the budget, or the electrical wiring for an 8" or larger jointer. Second, a jointer is not very safe. I do this as a hobby because I enjoy it, but no hobby is worth a finger or two. I don't have either of the problems with handplanes. I figure at worst I could break a couple of toes. Plus, although frustrating at times, I actually enjoying hand jointing and planing. Other than the final product, it's one of the few processes that I get a lot of satisfaction from -- especially when compare to the distain I have for going through jointer set up.

I feel about the same way about the planer but I'm not sure about the thickness issue. I don't mind thicknessing a couple of boards, but I'm not sure about beyond that, and I have 4 end tables and two coffee tables that I need to build before next Christmas. (I have two daughters who really take advantage of me.) That sounds like a long time, but I have a few other projects also and I go through periods at work where I don't get to do any woodworking. I'd like to change jobs, but I like to eat and my boss doesn't fully appreciate the importance of woodworking nor the vital role it plays in our society.

Bottom line is that getting rid of the jointer is easy--save money and space but give up a little bit of time. The planer is a little different, but I would really like to get rid of it. It's not fun.

Re: Scrub Plane Question

glh

>My understanding is that a scrub plane served the same function as a thickness planer before thickness planers were here. It was for removing significant amounts of wood, getting in the general vicinity of the desired thickness. Then, the jack plane is used to get things flat, and the smooth plane to smooth. So I don't see a need for a scrub plane for thicknessing if you use a thickness planer. However, because I prefer to sharpen hand plane blades over replace thickness planer knives (and jointer), I have used my jack plane to take the really rough places off of rough boards before running them through the machines. It also gives me a better idea of grain direction. However, because I am about to sell my jointer (reasoning in post below), I had mentioned to my wife that I would like to have a scrub plane--move my jack plane up a notch in the planing hierarchy. Unexpectedly, she gave me a gift certificate to a local Woodcraft for Valentine's Day, and I bought a scrub plane--I had to add some because she only knew I wanted a plane, not the specific one. I didn't bring it up, but there is something a bit unseemly about getting something called a scrub plane for Valentine's Day. A "smoother" or a "jointer" would have sounded better.

Cosman Video will be out soon

Jim Bodin - Iowa

>I received an e-mail from Rob last night he said - "Rough to Ready", bench side

instruction on dimensioning lumber by hand. It will walk you through

winding sticks, scrub plane, jointer and smoother. I will view the

final edit on Friday and if all is fine it should only be a few weeks.

All four will be available on DVD.

Rob

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Charles

>This is the hand tool forum.

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Patrick Gibbons, Houston, TX

>This is the hand tool forum. That's why I asked the question here. There are a lot of assumptions being made. One is that demensioning wood is a practical necessity that can be achieved completely by hand or one can use power tools and go on to the rest of the project using hand tools. I did not ask this question on the other side because I don't think the denizens of that abode would appreciate as much the use of handplanes to complete the task. I assume that most here use power tools as necessary (determined by their own inclinations) and I was curious what most hand tool users here did to demension their projects. If one uses power tools one must take all things into consideration. I believe dust collection is a very necessary part of using the electrical beasts. Lack of dust is certainly one of the reasons I prefer hand tools. For me, all the answers to my question have been appropriate and greatly appreciated.

Re: Scrub Plane Question

Patrick Gibbons, Houston, TX

>Scrubs are used for thicknessing but also for flattening a side that is uneven, warped, etc. I much rather do this with a scrub and then use a fore plane to take the scrub marks out.

Re: Scrub Plane Question

Robert Tarr

>I bring my scrub plane with me to the bench, every time I pick up the jack. I have a very old ECE scrub that I love. I can set it up for a super fine shaving and it really speeds up the process over just a #5 alone. I also use it with my jointer, to remove a crown quickly (or the ears of a cupped board). If I had to guess, two fine passes with the scrub equal about 10-12 with a jack or jointer....huge time saver.

Robert

Re: Squaring and flattening wood

Charles

>As dedicated hand tool users, most here have moved past the point at which they constantly compared a hand tool process with its mechanized brethren.

Having worked wood professionally using both means, I can tell you that I was FAR MORE PRODUCTIVE in a hand tool only shop than I was in a mechanized shop.

To answer your immediate question/satisfy your curiosity, dressing 120 board feet with hand tools is not that big a deal. However, one rarely dresses project stock all at once. One of the benefits of hand tools usage is the relative ease one can work project pieces as the project goes along. At least that's how I usually approach it.

Many times, it's too late to notice an unruly batch of material when using power tools. I've saved myself many a headache by noticing pent up stress in project stock before I blasted it through a power jointer and planer.

Re: Scrub Plane Question

glh

>I have been using a jack plane for getting rough boards close to flat before running them across the jointer. However, now that I have a scrub plane I will use it flattening rough boards before I move on to something else.

I got caught up in my Valentine's Day stuff and forgot to make the point that a scrub plane (or a jack plane) is still useful to anyone with a power jointer and/or planer if they buy rough boards. About all it requires is a properly sharpened blade, and that's cheaper and easier to maintain than planer/jointer knives.

Re: Squaring and flattening wood (long)

Patrick Gibbons, Houston, TX

>It's been fun seeing what others do about this issue. I will get a scrub and see for myself. In numerous articles in various woodworking mags a certain author from the Northwest has argued that a power jointer is necessary because no one can surface wood by hand as accurately as it can be done with power tools and thus the power jointer is indispensible. Sometimes I wonder if I'm better off working in my ignorance and not hearing some of the prevailing wisdom.

re

glh

>I have a good idea of who that author might be and I respect him tremendiously. In fact, assuming it's Gary Rogowski (may not be spelled correctly), I have his book on joinery as well as a couple of his vidoes (router joinery and mortise and tenons). However, I would disagree with his view that a jointer, or any other woodworking tool, especially power, is "indispensible". And it's real easy to verify. Those periods that are generally recognized as periods of the highest degree of craftsmanship and best furniture construction were before electricity, or at least before it was widespread. Some still construct great furniture without power tools. One thing I've learned in my short time as a woodworker is that there are almost always alternative methods of doing things and there are usually tradeoffs (time, budget, shop space, enjoyment, learning experience, etc...) involved with each method.