Flattening wide stock

[Admiral]

Oh, yeah, for sure. It may be that I'm looking for an opportunity to practice my skills, three boards would be my limit

[tomsteve]

any chance there may be a shop around ya with a jointer large enough to flatten one side?

[JGrout]

Admiral said:

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Oh, yeah, for sure. It may be that I'm looking for an opportunity to practice my skills, three boards would be my limit

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I would take on 15 boards with a handplane before messing around with a sled

[Ken Vick]

If you have pretty straight boards and are mostly concerned with cupping then you might be able to do it with your planer. I know the common sense thing that the planer will mash it flat and when it comes out the other side it will be cupped again. What I have found is that with thick lumber, the planer can not mash all the cup out of it and by taking light cuts with the cupped side down, a few passes will take enough of the crown out so that you can put that side down and plane the other side flat. This might not work with 1" lumber depending on the strength of the springs in your planer but I have good success with 2" and thicker. For sure it will work with lunch box planers but large planers have stouter springs. Remember, you don't have to get the first side perfectly flat, just get enough of a flat so that it will register with the floor of the planer when you turn the board over. Ken

[jgourlay]

Admiral said:

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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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100% agree!

[Dave Diaman]

Ken Vick said:

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If you have pretty straight boards and are mostly concerned with cupping then you might be able to do it with your planer. I know the common sense thing that the planer will mash it flat and when it comes out the other side it will be cupped again. What I have found is that with thick lumber, the planer can not mash all the cup out of it and by taking light cuts with the cupped side down, a few passes will take enough of the crown out so that you can put that side down and plane the other side flat. This might not work with 1" lumber depending on the strength of the springs in your planer but I have good success with 2" and thicker. For sure it will work with lunch box planers but large planers have stouter springs. Remember, you don't have to get the first side perfectly flat, just get enough of a flat so that it will register with the floor of the planer when you turn the board over. Ken

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Ken,
On 4/4 boards place the board with the cup facing up and wedge the sides. The wedges will keep the planer from pressing the board flat. Some people may not like the sled idea but I can tell you I have flattened A LOT of material using one. At least several thousand feet and it works really well. If it wasn't so quick and worked so well I would have bought a bigger jointer years ago.

[jteneyck]

I finally did just that:



It's 14" wide, and I just know I'll find some 16" wide boards that I want to use full width and I'll be right back in the same dilemma. But I'm a happy camper 'till then.

John

[R12C]

I use a home made router sled to flatten wide stock. This is a general Google image but it's basically what I use. It's cheap, easy, quick and works fantastic. I think I have a 3/4" or 1" flat bottom bit to use in the router. Things just need to be clamped down so they don't move. You can make it as large as you need it and as elaborate or simple as you want. I make live edge tables now and again and this is how I flatten the tops and bottoms.

[Mike77]

I'm flush with hand planes. Jointer, Jack, 2 #4's, blocks, shoulder, and router plane. And a myriad of blades from toothed to 50 degree. I'm going to need to select the boards for the top, take some winding sticks and check out just how much milling they need.

It sounds like there are a lot of options that are very workable depending on how flat they are to start with. The one thing that seems to be a common theme is, don't rip the boards if I don't have to.

[Ken Vick]

Dave Diaman said:

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[blockquote]Ken Vick said:

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If you have pretty straight boards and are mostly concerned with cupping then you might be able to do it with your planer. I know the common sense thing that the planer will mash it flat and when it comes out the other side it will be cupped again. What I have found is that with thick lumber, the planer can not mash all the cup out of it and by taking light cuts with the cupped side down, a few passes will take enough of the crown out so that you can put that side down and plane the other side flat. This might not work with 1" lumber depending on the strength of the springs in your planer but I have good success with 2" and thicker. For sure it will work with lunch box planers but large planers have stouter springs. Remember, you don't have to get the first side perfectly flat, just get enough of a flat so that it will register with the floor of the planer when you turn the board over. Ken

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Ken,
On 4/4 boards place the board with the cup facing up and wedge the sides. The wedges will keep the planer from pressing the board flat. Some people may not like the sled idea but I can tell you I have flattened A LOT of material using one. At least several thousand feet and it works really well. If it wasn't so quick and worked so well I would have bought a bigger jointer years ago.

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[/blockquote]

Dave, I completely agree with you. I have used a sled on several occasions as well as going the hand plane route especially if I needed to knock down a couple opposite corners because of a little twist. I was just pointing out that with thicker stock, the planer alone will often give good results. Ken