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I have some walnut I got on craigslist a while ago. The boards are ~2 inches thick and 14" wide and all cut from a single tree. They just scream dining table.
So, if this project happens this season, I will be dealing with some large boards. I have a 15" planer but only an 8" jointer. Typical situation. So, for flattening the face before running them through the planer I have a few options.
1. Ripping the boards with a thin kerf ripping blade, joint and plane.
2. Build a sled and plane.
3. Knock the high spots off with a jointer hand plane and plane..
4. And the last, just run them through hoping they are flat enough, probably not a good idea for a table top.
Whatcha think?
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Just did this not too long ago.
With an 8-inch jointer, you've got the jointer capacity. Remove the cutter guard and set the fence for just over half the width of the boards. Run one half the board through then reverse the board and joint the other half. Continue the process taking small cuts with each pass until you get a flat side. If one side is higher than the other you may need to run the high side through another time. Just remember to take light cuts with each pass.
You may want to practice on a scrap piece of wood to get a feel for how this works.
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Generally, I would only rip them if they were cupped to where I would loose a lot of wood but not ripping them. Another option is to make a sled from 3/4 ply and a simple cleat on the leading edge. Lay down two strips of masking tape down the length of the sled, and two more on one side of the board so they match up. Use a hot glue gun and put half dollar sized drops of hot glue every 8" or so on the masking tape on the sled, then place the board on the sled. The hot glue will level out the board, harden and stablize it enought to run through the planer. Cooled hot glue has very little give to it. The making tape allows you to pull the hot glue off both surfaces.
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Scoony said:
Generally, I would only rip them if they were cupped to where I would loose a lot of wood but not ripping them. Another option is to make a sled from 3/4 ply and a simple cleat on the leading edge. Lay down two strips of masking tape down the length of the sled, and two more on one side of the board so they match up. Use a hot glue gun and put half dollar sized drops of hot glue every 8" or so on the masking tape on the sled, then place the board on the sled. The hot glue will level out the board, harden and stablize it enought to run through the planer. Cooled hot glue has very little give to it. The making tape allows you to pull the hot glue off both surfaces.
This would be my choice too - make a sled (above is a great method others on the interwebs) to get one side true. Then you will be off to the races. Post some pics of your process if you do a table build would be fun to see!!
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dg152 said:
Just did this not too long ago.
With an 8-inch jointer, you've got the jointer capacity. Remove the cutter guard and set the fence for just over half the width of the boards. Run one half the board through then reverse the board and joint the other half. Continue the process taking small cuts with each pass until you get a flat side. If one side is higher than the other you may need to run the high side through another time. Just remember to take light cuts with each pass.
You may want to practice on a scrap piece of wood to get a feel for how this works.
I know of this technique too. I've just never had good luck with it and I wonder about trying it with such long boards. I want to keep as much material as I can. The table is going to be solid wood going length wise with bread board ends.
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If you flatten a face before planing, with either a jointer or a hand plane, you need to know where to take off material before cutting. Check with winding sticks and straightedge, mark where it needs to come off, and remove material. You don't need to make the face flat. You only need to make sure that bearing on this face will guide the stock flat through the planer.
If you do decide on a planer sled, note that a huge sled does not need to be a rigid reference surface. It can be as simple as a large piece of MDF that sits on a flat reference surface as you support your stock on it with wedges and/or hot glue. I am talking about cheapo weak glue from a hot glue gun. You then run the assembly through the planer, pry off the board, flip and plane off the glue and thickness the board. A little flex in the sled does not matter while you are using it, as long as the stock doesn't shift.
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Mike I think you just need to practice some more and read this again. I have successfully accomplished flattening on stock up to 10ft long many many times so it is not that it cannot be done. It just takes some time a critical eye and winding sticks to check progress then placing the stock to the area that needs reduction. Joe
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Make a jointing sled for your planer. You will find a ton of designs oh Google. All you need is a piece of 15" wide plywood and some shim material. I do this quite a bit when material will not fit across my 12' Jointer. Due to the way my machine is made I can not use the multiple pass method for flattening. If I was buying a new jointer right now I would but a different machine due to this short coming.
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It might be me, but fussing around with special jigs for the jointer and planer is a whole lot more time consuming than just flattening one face with hand planes. While I know how to S4S stock with hand tools, I generally use electrons for that task, but at times like you describe, where it would be a sin to rip stock just to fit your jointer, I do it by hand. You can google and get many descriptions of the process, but it is possible to be accomplished with a #5, better yet with a #5 and a #6 or #7. You only need one flat reference surface to put in your planer, and it does not have to be an absolutely perfect finished surface, as you will pass this surface through the planer once the other side is co-planar with it. Start with a #5 with an iron that has been ground to a radius to act like a scrub plane to hog off the very high points and get you to a general flatness (unless you have or can borrow a scrub); I have a #5 dedicated to this purpose, but if you have an extra iron you can just switch them for the scrub process. Follow up with a slightly cambered edge #5, and finish off with a #6 or #7. You will sweat and might be sore when done if you don't regularly use handplanes, but you will end up with a flat reference surface to put into your jointer. This is a lot faster than fussing with all the jigs, etc., which I agree will work, but why bother. If you don't have the planes, borrow them from someone who does who will trust you with them . . 
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Admiral,
I agree that hand planes will do the job but calling what I use a jig is a bit of a stretch on my part. If he is flattening one board it is possible that it could be faster but only if the board is almost flat to start with. It sounds like he will be flattening a whole tables worth of boards which will take a lot more time. All I use is a piece of ¾ plywood with a strip tacked to one end to keep the board from sliding off. Set the board to be flattened on the piece of plywood, Stick shims under it until it stops rocking and run it through the planer. Since I already have the sled sitting next to my planer the whole process takes about 1 minute. Don’t get me wrong, hand planes are a fantastic tool and I use them a whole lot in my shop but for a task like this I will go to a power tool 10 times out of 10 simply because the task can be completed in a fraction of the time. Some tasks in my shop are always done the old fashion way because I feel using a power tool would compromise the final product. Dovetails are what comes to mind first but I will admit as much as I love hand planes I detest flattening stock with them.
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