I have a tabletop approximately 35 inches square made up 14 white oak boards glued together. The top side is fairly even but not perfectly so. The under side is considerably less even.
My class instructor says we can put it through the planer (mid-August).
I am very inexperienced. My question is this: is there anything wrong with using a plane on the underside and attempting to smooth it up some?
Replies
I think that you said u glued up 14 little boards. If they were all milled at the same time and are of the same dimension, you should have used cauls to keep the table top flat. Use waxpaper or shrink wrap plastic on cauls to prevent cauls from sticking to the board. Even after that you may need to flatten you table top. I am sure that you are familiar with a card scraper. Use that to get rid of the small differences in height between the boards. After that u can use your jack or fore plane to plane some. And maybe finish it by using a hand sander.
Or you could use a belt sander (Dewalt makes one with an accessory) for flattening table tops. U could have used it right after the scraper.
Or if you don't have any of the tools, and just have a block plane. Use the block plane to even the top and the bottom.
z3,
Yes you can hand plane the underside to flatten your top. I recommend you use a jack plane or longer. Plane across the width of the top first. This will leave a fairly rough, but uniform, surface. If you have enough thickness to send it thru a planer, all you have to do is make the underside flat. You can use a long straightedge, and a pair of winding sticks to do this. Once flat, the planer will make the top side parallel to the bottom, and you can flip it, and send thru again. Plan on losing at least 1/16" of thickness, possibly as much as an eighth of an inch, depending on how out of whack the glueup went. A thickness sander will be kinder to your top all round.
Hand planing a top smooth, with that many boards in it can be problematic as the many changes in grain direction, from one board to another, can make it hard to avoid tearout on one side or the other of a glue line. You will want to go at the surface you planed crosswise, carefully, first with the long plane very sharp, and set to take a light cut. If you are good at reading the grain, you can see or feel by running your hand over the wood, which way the grain inclines. Try to plane with the grain as much as possible. Finish with a smoothing plane set very fine, then use a scraper to clean up any tearout that's left.
Ray
After having a professional cabinet shop ruin my 24 x 36 x 2.5 maple butcher block top when I took it to them to plane flat, here is what I suggest:
If you have access to a drum sander, I would choose that option because it results in less grain tear out than a planer.
If your top is straight grained with all boards grain direction matched, planing is OK.
If grain is not uniformly oriented, Planing is OK if the knives are very sharp and you take very thin "skim cut" passes.
The biggest problem you will have to overcome is the issue that the bottoms side is worse than the top. In resurfacing the top: The plane of the top will be defined by a uniform distance from the plane defined by the three highest points on the opposite side. This will change as one of those high points travels off the planer bed. (As one high point drops off the bed, the top will drop down until the next three highest points are in contact.) Therefore, you may need to build a sled to block up the top so that you get a flat top that doesn't move while it goes through the planer.
An alternative approach, if the top is very close to being flat and planar, is to reference off it and surface the bottom side. Then do the topside last.
Another option is to build a gantry jig and use a router to surface at least one side. Then use this side on the planer bed to thickness the top.
Good Luck.
This shows the importance of good technique in gluing up tops.
Greg
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Exo 35:30-35
Edited 8/1/2007 10:05 am by Cincinnati
I'd do it by hand using winding sticks- you will have better control and will avoid a potential machine made disaster with grain tear out.
I'd use a #7 plane going oblique to the grain (~45 degrees). Make sure that the blade is sharp, 30 degrees or steeper in cutting angle, and cambered to avoid tear out at the edges. When the winding sticks show a bump, chalk it and the other high spots and knock them down with the plane. When you have the table top reasonably flat, plane with the grain and slightly hollow the inner part of the table top.
You can then use a smoothing plane to "smooth out" the top. I use a LN 4 1/2 with a York pitch to avoid tearout. Plane obliguely at first, then with the grain. Make sure the blade is sharp and cambered.
You can then use a card scraper or cabinet scraper to finish up. Afterwards, you will have a pretty decent top that will only require modest sanding prior to finish application.
I would not depend on sanding to get things right, it will take a lot of sanding, and you have less control over flatness.
Finally, keep in mind that the table top does not need to be within 2 thous to be flat. The final surface may not be float glass even, but you won't notice it. For proof, drop a machinist's straight edge on a nice antique table- the table top will not be dead flat, but it still looks great.
Good luck,
Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Yikes! Now I am scared. The boards were milled over several weeks with the intent to make them equivalent, but something happened . . .
I am certain of one thing, however, the grain is NOT matched.
I have never planed anything important before.
I think I will start planing the underside and see how that goes. I have at least 1 1/16 in. thickness, so I have some working room.
Thanks to all that replied.
z3
Don't be intimidated. If you properly sharpen and camber the cutting iron, and start with a very light cut, you will find it is much harder to ruin the top with a handplane, than it is with a power tool- where you can butcher it in a fraction of a second. Take your time, and enjoy yourself-Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Does "camber" refer to rounding the corners of blade?
I started planing the underside. It's working pretty well--rather tiring. I'm just working on getting the adjacent boards even right now.
Yes- you want to have a slight camber or rounding of the corners to avoid tearing up with the corners of the cutting iron. There are a variety of ways to do this- I usually do it with sandpaper, float glass and a strip of paper, but there are other ways.Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Z, absolutely no reason to be intimidated. Others have given good advice, and if you have a suitable plane, now is the time to become familiar with set up and sharpening.Starting with the under side is good.
A slight camber on the blade will help a lot. If you use an Eclipse type honing guide this will make it easy for you to put on the camber, especially if you have a diamond plate, on which you can exert full force alternately to each side of the blade while honing.You would also still take the sharp corners off the blade.Philip Marcou
What type/size of plane are you using? I'd recommend a #5 jack for hogging-off most of the waste and then go to a #7 for getting it truly flat. It can be tiring but the momentum of a hefty plane and very sharp blade will make it easier than having to power a lighter plane all the way through the pass. John O'Connell - JKO Handcrafted Woodworking
The more things change ...
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Petronious Arbiter, 210 BC
Z,
You have gotten lots of recommendation.
You have had recommendations to use a #5 plane to hog off the wood, and the to use a #7 to flatten it. Someone else said to use a Jack plane. I suppose that a Fore Plane would work even better.
So do you try a #5, #6 or maybe even a 5 1/2 for the hogging?
Then for flattening, you will find that Rob Cosman vehemently recommends the #8, and not the #7.
Given all of this confusion, what are you to do?
This is an old problem on Knots.
When a newbie asks a question, he is hoping there is a single answer that everyone agrees is correct. That is never the case in woodworking.
Here is my answer. It doesn't matter. Skill is the key, and it must be gotten by practice, not by talk. You can use a #5, #5 1/2, or #6 for the hogging, and either a 7 or an 8 for the flattening, and then either a 3, a 4, a 4 1/2 or a 5 for the "smoothing". All will work satisfactorily or not, depending on how fast you learn how to control them.
More important is what Philip Marcou said. By the way, when Philip talks about planes, you should listen. He makes some of the best planes in the universe. You need to learn how to put a slight "round" on the edge. I recommend that you get Thomas Lie Nielsen's book on sharpening, and see how to do that. Also, Rob Cosman has a CD on "rough to ready" which shows how to take rough lumber and get it dimensioned and smoothed and ready for use. Or get a demo from someone who has done it.
Have fun. Enjoy woodwork. Expect disagreement on all recommendations in woodworking. Learn to love the ambiguity. Focus on the skills more than the tools. If anyone tells you "buy the best tools", ignore them. When you are just learning, get some experience on tools that you can get second hand. It is absolutely stupid to learn to grind edges on a new set of Lie Nielsen chisels. The "Best" for a learner is that which suits the learner's needs. Race car drivers don't begin to learn how to drive in a Ferrari. They work up to it.
Hope that my strange advice is useful to you. The most important thing for you to learn in asking for advice, is who you should take it from. A lot of people give advice which is far from optimal. Averaging everyones advice rarely leads to anything other than mush.
Enjoy.
Mel
Measure your output in smiles per board foot.
Mel,Good post.I think that flattening this sort of top would require 2 planes- a longer jointer (#7) to flatten, and a finishing plane (#4 or 4 1/2 or even a 5).Unless the top is really uneven, any of the above will be enough to remove waste (much more so than sanding or scraping). Since this is not a unsurfaced plank with a twist or major warp, I don't think he'll need to "hog off" much, and probably should avoid it, as he may, in inexperience, remove more than he wants to. Checking frequently with winding sticks or a straightedge should avoid this.For flatness, a longer plane is better, hence my preference for a #7 here. For finishing, any number of properly honed and cambered planes would do, I'd set the throat to be a bit tight if I were using a jack (#5).Just my 2p,Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
I posted this a short while ago in another thread. The plane used is a LV LA Jack with a 25 degree cambered bevel. This Cherry table top is made of four boards that were jointed and matched for grain. As a result, some boards have opposing grain direction.
The technique is to plane across the grain.
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Make sure that these are fine shavings:
View Image
Once levelled, clean up with smoother with a high cutting angle or a scraper plane.
Regards from Perth
Derek
I very much appreciate your comments. I have a #4 plane. I had to look at the invoice; it seems strange that the plane is not labelled with its number.
I will look at some of the other planes and perhaps buy one.
Right now I have evened up the first 3 joints (of 13) on the underside. I presume the corners of the blade should be rounded. Should the #4 smoothing plane have a cambered edge?
z,
If you are using the #4 for smoothing, you should camber both sides of the iron (blade). As you are honing, just press down more on one side for a number of strokes, and then do the same for the other side. Put about 80% of the pressure on one side and 20% on the other when you are doing the honing. Take a look at the edge as you go along. You'll see the secondary bevel get a bit wider as it nears th edges. You will not be able to see the "rounding". It is too small. Then try out the blade. You want to take very small shavings when you are smoothing. You will get a full shaving but the center of the shaving will be a hair thicker than the outside.I hope that helps. Watch the Rob Cosman CD on sharpening and using planes.
Hope that helps.
MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
I agree...Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
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