Replies

1. 
   mikeddd | Dec 05, 2009 10:14pm | #1

   Zappa:

    I would start with a jack plane, then a #6 Fore plane or a #7 jointer and then finish with a #3 or a #4 smoother. If you are an online member there is a free download of The Handplane Book by Garrett Hack. If you don't have any experience with hand planes I suggest you should do some reading before purchasing anything.

   Mike

   
   

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   Edited 12/5/2009 2:19 pm ET by mikeddd

1. 
   jonnieboy | Dec 06, 2009 10:28am | #4

   Mike,

   Jsut passing by... I didn't know Garrett Hack's book was a free download for members.  Thanks for mentioning that.

   --jonnieboy

2. 
   Lataxe | Dec 05, 2009 10:39pm | #2

   Z,

   Well....a power planer, surely?

   If you're going to plane one side (and one edge?) of a plank flat & square by hand, why not do the whole plank that way?  I confess, that much handplaning would not be my cup of tea - smoothing large areas and dimensioning smaller parts is enough hard labour for this lazy lad.

   Lataxe

   
   

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   Edited 12/5/2009 2:41 pm ET by Lataxe

   
1. 
   roc | Dec 06, 2009 03:47pm | #5

   Photos of jointerAhh now there's a bonnie sight !signed,Dreaming of a wide jointer on a winter's morn. in ColoradoGive me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln ( 54° shaves )

   Edited 12/6/2009 7:48 am by roc

1. 
   Taigert | Dec 07, 2009 10:15am | #9

   Roc,

   Sorry, that it's an old picture, taken back on the day I unpacked it.

   Taigert

   
1. 
   roc | Dec 10, 2009 02:05am | #10

   >Sorry, that it's an old picture<Well I will forgive you, this once, just ship it to my house and all is forgotten. I will even pay shipping just to show there are no hard feelings.Ah . . . Zappa . . . the boys have a good point. All yah need now is a thousand $ or so and flat boards galore.Lataxe,Well you know me except the one table that weighs as much as the MG I make small stuff so it is no problem to scrub a little here and there. Keeps all my youthful zeal off the streets and out of trouble. Other wise i would have to be a soccer fan and over turn cars and stuff.I can appreciate the fine Euro machines though. Makes me want to make lots of big stuff.But that would cut into my time on Knots and that would be a shame.Besides I would have to buy a lot of wood and have to be carting off all the furniture ( no room here for it all ) and then what to do with all that money from the people who bought all the furniture I had carted off to them and paying taxes on it all.Naw too complicated. I just perfected my technique for sharpening the scrub blade too. Be a shame to waste all that dedicated research not to mention the scanning electron microscope time. They have quite a waiting list to get to use it.: )rocGive me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln ( 54° shaves )

   Edited 12/9/2009 6:06 pm by roc

3. 
   Samson | Dec 06, 2009 12:14am | #3

   If you want to get one side flat to reference for your lunchbox planer, you don't need more than a couple of planes, as the reference side just needs to be relatively flat, not necessarily pretty (e.g., no need to smooth or even remove every scallop or spot).

   The planes you should choose depend a bit on the state of the wood you are usually starting with - i.e., how rough is it? If it is decent sort of s2s one gets from most yards, you might get away without a scrub, but if you have air dried bandsaw mill sort of stuff, a scrub might be useful. Another issue is the typical size of the boards you are using. If you only did small boxes for example, you might get away with small planes.

   At a minimum I would recommend a 5 1/2 (or plane 5) or a 7, preferably both. Put a decent camber on the jack to quickly get the high spots down, and then use the longer 7 to flatten as its sole will span enough of the boards to do this well. Unlike smoothing or other planing operations, alot of the work here will be on the diagonals - or even straight across the width - you don't care about a shiny surface or tearout much for this operation - just getting it flat. A straight edge, and winding sticks - along with a relatively flat benchtop are all useful to check your progress.

4. 
   Bill_Anderson | Dec 06, 2009 07:43pm | #6

   I think you have two separate questions there.  If you need to take some twist  or cup out of a board before you put it through the planer--you can save alot of wood this way--then a scrub plane will very quickly put one face of the board flat enough to give you a resonable reference face for power planing. 

   However, I would not take the time to surface plane and flatten a board before I put it in the planer.  Whatever you do with the planer, you are going to want to handplane the board later.   Plus once it comes out of a planer, it might very well "move" as it reacclimates to the shop environment.  The planer will take it to rough dimensions pretty well.  If you have a lot of bow in the wood (bending end to end), that might be more of a problem and you may want to reconsider using that board in in its entire length. 

   Once I have the board roughed on theplaner and jointer, I will take it to final dimensions with handplanes.  Depending on the stock removal, I may start with a jack plane.  I have two of these, one with a heavily cambered blade and a wide mouth for agressive removal and one ground more conventionally.  Afte that, dep[ending on the stock length, I would use a try/fore/jointer followed by a smoothing plane with a slight camber.

5. 
   roc | Dec 07, 2009 12:05am | #7

   Phillip,

   Didn't you recently introduce a scrub plane into your custom hand plane line up that reduces the planing effort by fifty percent due to the revolutionary concept of bevel up design and critical 40 and 1/2 degree cutting angle being applied to a scrub plane?

   As I understand it you unearthed the formula that Thomas Jefferson used to develop the moldboard plow that has never been improved on to this day and using your superior understanding of wood and all that is cutting tools to take this formula to a whole new stratosphere of second stage fine wood stock preparation.

   wink, wink,

   Phillip is not on line right now or I would have addressed this to him. Probably busy in the shop testing and developing marvels of stock preparation as we speak.

   roc

   Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln ( 54° shaves )

   
   

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   Edited 12/6/2009 4:07 pm by roc

1. 
   Lataxe | Dec 07, 2009 08:57am | #8

   Roc,

   One suspects that young Philip will have a handy green button to press on an Enormous Piece of Cast Iron Planing Machine rather than a scrub plane.  Even I, a Marcou-addict, would not be saving up for a Marcou scrub plane as life is now too short, the lists too long, to be spending hours making planks vaguely less bent with nowt but muscle and a wee curved blade.

   But since you have begun a list of "innovative Marcous" I believe we should now get serious and specify some trooly useful planes for the lad to make.  He has always been agin the block plane but you and I know that such items can be useful on an everyday basis. 

   As I recall, there was a prototype made as an offshoot from the manufacture of those mini-planes.................

   View Image

   From http://forums.taunton.com/fw-knots/messages?msg=44467.190

   Lataxe

   PS I knows you are a scrubbing man but I put this down to a youthful excess of energy and zeal.  :-)