I’ve decided to go with white maple and brown maple for the wood. I’ll use the white maple for door/drawer fronts, side panels, shelf, and top. I’ll use the brown maple for the legs and rails. I’ll have to face glue a few pieces of the brown maple to get my 2” x 2” legs but that’s no big deal.
I picked up the white maple today from the lumberyard and it’s surfaced on 2 sides (the faces). But there are still some waves from the cutterhead that I can see and slightly feel. Do I need to plane these down some more or can I surface the other 2 sides and then sand the faces when I get to that point?
I’m still waiting to get the brown maple and the plywood for the side panels. They said that would take about 10 days to get. So now I either need to tune up my hand plane that I got for christmas or start rough cutting and running the boards through the jointer.
-- Fladdy
9 comments so far
cabmaker
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#1 posted 818 days ago
For the wavy situation you can run through the planer just kissing it. Why wait for the ply? Is it a differant slice orientation or can you let the stain contrast it for you ? Or are you staining ?
fladdy
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#2 posted 818 days ago
I’m staining the brown maple to get more of a contrast and I figured that using plywood would be cheaper than using solid wood and it would make it a little bit lighter.
I don’t have a thickness planer, just a hand planer so I was thinking about using that to help get rid of the waves before sanding. Do you think that would be enough?
Thank you for the questions and the tips. I’m still pretty much a newbie.
-- Fladdy
cabmaker
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#3 posted 818 days ago
Yes I do. Good luck and enjoy
TopamaxSurvivor
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#4 posted 817 days ago
What is brown maple?
-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence Wake Up America!! Please read; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0
fladdy
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#5 posted 817 days ago
From what I can tell, it’s just a darker colored maple. But that’s a rookie talking, I have no idea other than the color.
-- Fladdy
dbray45
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#6 posted 817 days ago
A hand scaper works really well to removed the raised grooves. Just a note, if you are paying for the planing, then the vendor should fix the blades or charge you less. Also, if you are going to have to clean up the lumber, you may want to ask the it be a little proud of 3/4” thick. Although its more work for you, it is easier to remove a 1/16” than to add it.
Just a thought.
-- David in Damascus, MD
dbray45
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#7 posted 817 days ago
Hard maple, soft maple, red maple I have heard of – red maple is actually a little pink in color and is a soft maple, soft maples are lighter and hard maple tends to be a little darker – yellowish to golden (and a whole lot harder to work with) but I have never heard of brown maple. Could be a local thing – maybe hard maple because it is darker, don’t know.
-- David in Damascus, MD
fladdy
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63 posts in 1181 days
#8 posted 817 days ago
Thanks cabmaker and dbray. I just finished tuning my hand planer so now I’ll be cutting the boards to rough length and then planing. the lumber is 15/16” that I’m getting and I kind of want to learn how to go from rough lumber to finish project so I don’t mind planing. I didn’t think of a hand scraper though, but I don’t have one either. Thanks for the tips, I’m open to all.
-- Fladdy
dbray45
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2018 posts in 944 days
#9 posted 817 days ago
Watch your grain direction when planing, can make a big difference.
-- David in Damascus, MD
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