preparing rough lumber

[JeffW]

I have always found them to be reasonable as evidenced by my post in the BT3100 accessory kit deal above.

Measure twice, cut once, screw it up, start over

[plarval]

preparing rough lumber

I have a planer and a benchtop jointer. I realize I need to face joint rough lumber first, etc. before I head to the planer. But my rough lumber consists of some wide boards that I would like to keep intact, rather than rip down to a size my jointer can accomodate. I've been told if I run it through the planer first, Things could get out of parrallel easily or not truely end up "flat". Anyone have any suggestions. This is my first forray into dealing with true rough lumber.

[Mainemarc]

Well, the benchtop jointer limits you, how wide is your jointer bed?

But in theory you can remove the blade guard, face joint one half of the face (well, up to the usable width of the jointer bed), turn it around and do the other half. So if your jointer has a 6 1/8" wide bed, then you can face joint up to 12 1/4" wide boards.

You will be planing against the grain on one of the two halves, so you will get some tear out. You can minimize that by setting the jointer to take very light cuts and plan on cleaning up any remaining surface defects with your surface planer.

And then of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the neander approach; using a hand plane. Actually, for boards wider than twice your jointer bed width, the two techniques might work well in tandem. Face joint from each edge of the board, and those surfaces would serve as guides to hand plane the remaining strip up the middle.

[LarryG]

Two mutually exclusive thoughts:

1) I understand the desire to keep wide boards wide, especially if you paid a premium to get wider-than-usual lumber, but many woodworkers will rip wide stock into narrower pieces and glue them back together as one way to help minimize cupping. A side benefit, obviously, is that the boards can be ripped to suit the width of one's jointer.

2) When you have wide stock and the above is not acceptable, I think the best/easiest/safest approach is to take the material to a cabinet shop that has a wide enough jointer and pay them to dress one face and, possibly, one edge. Once you've got at least one face flat, you can finish up at home with your own tools (although you must be mindful of the length of your stock vs the length of your jointer's tables).

[don_hart]

Both of Larry's suggestion are good.

If you rough cut lumber has no bows or twists along the wide side then you can plane the board and then joint the edges to get them square. If this is not true as it is often not then you will need to joint one wide of the board.

There is also another option besides getting a bigger jointer or taking it to a cabinet shop. That is to build a jointing sled for your planer. Basically this is a flat board slightly narrower than the width of the planer with a small lip on one edge to keep the piece you are planing in place. The lip must be smaller than the thickness you are trying to plane to. You place the board on the sled and use shims to keep the bowed or twisted sections of the board from bieng forced flat by the planers rollers. When you get done plaing one side it should be flat and then you can plane the other side without the sled.

[jcjrsmith]

The Jaunuary issue of Fine Woodworking magazine has an article about building a sled for the planer.

[germdoc]

What Don and Jerry said. Or get a #7 or #8 jointer plane and do it by hand. Or do what I did and take a WW class at the local TC. Then you will if you're lucky have access (most of the year, anyway) to an industrial size jointer (12"? 15"? The thing is WIDE--I'm not even sure how wide) and planer (30") and belt sander (40").

[Tom Hintz]

I have a story about preparing lumber at the link below that might be of some help as well.

http://www.newwoodworker.com/squrstock.html

[monte]

Nice article Tom!

[mcgrath4u]

"Mutually Exclusive"???? I cant get away from probability and statistics!!!!

[looneytools]

Along the lines of what Mainemarc said, you can cut a rabbet the width of your jointer blades by removing the guard but passing the board across in one direction until flat. Then attach a 1/4" pieace of ply in the rabbet. This will provide a flat bottom to run across your planer with some overhang. Plane the top flat then turn over, remove the ply and plane the bottom.

Thats all Folks!
Bob

[ElRay]

If the rough lumber is "flat enough" you can just run it through the planer.

If it has too much cup/warp/etc., you could use a planer sled. Some folks love them. Try a search here, I know it's been discussed before.

Ray

[plarval]

Thanks for all the advice. I did take a look at the sled, interesting, but another time consuming jig construction. I spend more time making jigs than any darn project. These boards are extremely flat, so I might just try and run it through the planer as Elray suggests and see what happens. Otherwise, I'll just suck it up and rip it down first. Thanks again.

[Otter]

All my projects require at least 60% jig making, 40% project work

[ElRay]

quote:Originally posted by plarval

I spend more time making jigs than any darn project.

The LOML is starting to understand that concept now. She couldn't understand why it would take hours to get ready to do something that took 15 mins. Now she's starting to realize that without the jig, it would have taken longer, or the rsults would have poor.

Ray