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The Editors Mailbox

How to Mill Lumber

Fine Woodworking Editors, 

42 users recommend

Get Organized to avoid mistakes. Inspect each board for grain direction, cupping, and bowing before you start milling, and keep them organized so you don't have to look at each one before feeding it into the next machine.

Matt Kenney

Learn how to properly joint and face rough-sawn lumber.

Matt Kenney

Finally, learn simple techniques for squaring parts and cutting them to final length.

Matt Kenney

Get Organized to avoid mistakes. Inspect each board for grain direction, cupping, and bowing before you start milling, and keep them organized so you don't have to look at each one before feeding it into the next machine.

Photo: Matt Kenney

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Fine Woodworking contributor Stuart Lipp's first job at a furniture shop primarily involved cutting lumber to size. He learned quickly that to make beautiful furniture, you must mill carefully. Cut a board too narrow, for example, and you no longer have bookmatched panels wide enough for your doors. Mill a piece out of square, and you could throw a whole project off kilter.

The way to avoid mistakes, was to follow a logical sequence, and stack boards in an orderly fashion so that there was no question about how they should be fed into the waiting machines. To make things easier, as he moved from one machine to another, he started using two carts, one for the infeed side and one for the outfeed side.

By following Lipp's three time-tested steps, you'll be able to turn rough-sawn lumber into straight, flat, square furniture parts in no time flat.

Step 1 - Flatten Both Faces First
Milling a board square starts at the jointer, where you flatten one face. Then you move to the planer and plane the second face parallel to the first.

Get your boards organized before you start. Stack them so that they can be taken off the cart and fed directly into the jointer, which means the grain runs from top to bottom as it goes from the front end of the board to the back. If any boards are cupped or bowed, stack them so that the cup or bow makes a frown. The two low ends will provide a more stable base than the peak of the cup or bow. Lipp also throws a scrap board on the stack so that he can test his machine setups as he works through the milling process.

When planing, you can reduce snipe-the tendency of the planer to cut deeper at the front and back ends of the board-by feeding the boards through so that the leading end of one touches the trailing end of the one in front of it. Before the final pass, send the scrap piece through to check that the planer is set to the correct thickness.

Faces, but no edges. Lipp starts by flattening a face, but doesn't then straighten an edge. It's not always possible to feed edge grain into the jointer properly when only one face is jointed.

 Jointer Flattens and Straightens First Face

Because the jointer's cutter is below the board, the grain should slope from top to bottom as you feed the stock from right to left. Feed a board backwards and the jointer will tear out grain rather than cut it cleanly. Stack the boards on your infeed cart facing the proper direction. Be sure to place the board's concave side down. Next, feed the boards one-by-one. As you take boards off the jointer, stack them the same way they went in, on your outfeed cart.

Plane second face flat. When the board is about 90% flat, begin to flip it end for end after each pass. That keeps the grain running in the right direction as you take equal amounts off each face, which relieves internal tensions evenly and minimizes how much the board will cup afterward.

 Planer Makes Second Face Parallel to First

Planer knives hit the top of the board, so you'll need to turn your infeed cart so that the grain direction is reversed and the end that went first into the jointer goes last into the planer. Remember, as the boards come out of the planer, restack them so that the grain runs in the same direction.

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Comments (3)

docforr writes: This article was very helpful to me. Is there a way to use a jointer to mill boards wider than the blade. I have a 6" jointer and would like to mill 8" boards.

Paul Forrest
Posted: 10:07 am on August 23rd

plankowner writes: Thanks for all the good information Lipp and woodpapi. I am a beginner at woodworking and this helps me out a lot. I have a jointer and a planer and can now use them the correct way to produce nice pieces from rough lumber. Thanks.
Posted: 10:55 pm on June 16th

woodpapi writes: Milling both faces before putting an edge to the jointer is a safer method to avoid splinters than milling an edge with a rough face exposed. This is in addition to the flexibility of flipping the board end for end to correct grain feed direction. It also make it easyer to alternate reference faces so that if you do not have a perfect 90 degrees on the jonter fence, the error will correct itself.
Posted: 2:14 pm on June 15th

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