Dimensioning Rough Lumber

Well done, i have trouble planing pine but you seemed to make it look easy. Ive only had to do it by hand once and its a chore, but one that i kind of enjoyed. Every now and then i feel the need to sweat out some poison. Ive got to get all my planes up to snuff and build myself a new bench that doesnt rock around so much. One of these days ill put away that noisy planer.

-- "there aren’t many hand tools as awe-inspiring as the #8 jointer. I mean, it just reeks of cast iron heft and hubris" - Smitty

Nice job. Looks like you got some holdfast holes bored in the table top.
Amazing, like chrisstef said, you make it look easy. I really need to invest in a couple good planes and blades to match.
Thanks for the post.

-- "Man's ingenuity has outrun his intelligence" (Joseph Wood Krutch)

Very good setup on your bench.

I mill by hand and don’t see the purchase of a power-jointer in my future. Since you have two jointers, try this out for size…do a slight camber on your wooden jointer and keep the steel jointer blade straight. Squaring an edge with a cambered jointer is so much easier than any other method, and if it needs to a glue joint take a fine shaving with your straight blade and you are good to go.

With the jack…are your planing with the grain or across it?

-- Make furniture that lasts as long as the tree - Ryan

RG, thanks for the tip. I actually have three jointers, the two in these pictures and a #7 as well. The wooden and #8 jointers have cambered blades for the reasons you pointed out. My #7 has a straight blade. I agree it so much easier to square an edge with a cambered blade.

For dimensioning on this pine board with the #5, I went at a 45 degree across the board. Pine is pretty soft so it was conducive to that angle which also minimized tearout that the straight across the grain planing would have done. I didn’t try it, but I assume edge jointing would have gotten rid of any tearout, but it was pretty easy to plane that board. Now I have some hard maple to try next, I don’t think that will be as easy.

Thanks again!

-- Mike

Yes, I also do all my dimensioning with hand tools. With sharp tools, it is not that bad and I save money on the wood, get a good workout in the bargain.

-- Yves

Hey RG, great work on those blogs! Very impressive and informative. I wish you had done that stuff about 5 years ago. Would have saved a whole bunch of money spent on books! Keep up the good work.

-- Mike

Thanks man. It’s been a heck of a lot of fun. The first board I dimensioned in the class is pretty narrow, which tends to nullify any benefit from cross grain planing, but we will get there…especially on the table top.

One other way to decrease or eliminate the tear-out on cross-grain planing is to plane a camfer (one or two strokes with the jack depending on how brittle the wood is) on the exit side of the cut. Doing that saves some serious time. If you then make the exit side your true edge, you eliminate your chamfer when you edge joint.

Yrob. I so agree with you.

-- Make furniture that lasts as long as the tree - Ryan

It goes MUCH faster when you get a scrub plane. I got the one made by Veritas and it is a pleasure to use.

Planing pine with it is quite easy and very fast. Then I tried some ash. It goes fast as well, but requires much more sweat:)

The Essential Woodworker is a great resource for anyone who wants to work mostly with hand tools.

^That’s just a good book in general.

-- Make furniture that lasts as long as the tree - Ryan

OK, I enjoy working with hand tools as well as the next guy, but, I am having difficulty getting my mind around why this is advantageous to dimension large panels with hand tools.

From what I can tell, dimensional accuracy pretty much goes out the window and unless I am needing to raise money to get my electricity turned back on, I cannot see myself foregoing my thickness planer, jointer and table saw in favor of the process you just outlined.

Lest the casual reader suspects I am just being critical, please accept this as an invitation to “convert” me to the process.

I know, for example, when I am building instruments, I do it in the time-honored methods of the masters. It’s been proven that instruments produced by mechanized means are far inferior to the completely handmade variety.

I suppose I am not seeing why casework and furniture might suffer the same issues.

-- "Hard work is not defined by the difficulty of the task as much as a person's desire to perform it.", DS251

Good job on the dimensioning.

I use both power and by hand. I leave the last 1/4 – 1/8” to do by hand. If you are gluing panels, I would recommend that you keep the thickness a little heavy and after a light pass with planes to flatten, finish with a scraper plane or hand scrapers. The surface, especially hardwoods will be really nice. The scrapers and scraper plane remove tearouts with and cross grain and leave the surface smoother than sandpaper can achieve.

-- David in Damascus, MD

And a lot less dust

-- David in Damascus, MD

I will sometimes surface all 4 sides with hand planes but I will admit my power jointer/planer gets used often… If the rough sawed board is rather clean and straight then using hand planes is pretty enjoyable… A big warp or twist and hand planes is not so fun anymore…

Also depends on how much lumber I need to surface… If I only need a board or to then hand planes is ok.. However if I am doing a lot of BF then the power jointer and planer is a true savior.

-- Dan - "Collector of Hand Planes"

For what it’s worth, I use both hand tools and power tools to get the job done. Sometimes power tools can’t do what hand tools can do, and visa-versa.

Steve

DS251.

One key advantage is cost. With a simple set of planes you can dimension any size workpeice (whether it is 2 feet wide or .5 inches wide) a top shelf set of bench planes (smoother, jack, jointer) would cost about 1200, but compare that to a top shelf 24” jointer/planer and you still come out way ahead. This cost mathing reallys starts to add up when you compare a fully equiped hand-tool shop vs a fully equiped powershop.

The shavings are a non-waste item in my shop…they just get used in the winter time to start fires to warm my home. I can’t way as much for the sawdust made from a power tool.

Oh, and for my time in the shop…it’s a heck of a lot more fun to take a peice of lumber through it’s paces queitly by hand, than to have to worry about the noise, dust and danger of powertools (not to say you can make a trip to the hospital with a misplaced chisel or hatchet…but the damage is certainly far less).

That’s why I do things the way I do.

-- Make furniture that lasts as long as the tree - Ryan