Planer vs. Glue

[jonathan55]

I am making the cutting board from a recent issue of Wood Magazine. I glued strips of wood together and am getting ready to run it through the planer as the instructions suggest. Somehow this worries me. Is glue really OK for the planer knives?

[Warren]

For what it's worth, I'd scrape the glue off where possible, hand plane if necessary and then sand. I would think the only problem with a planer is that cleaning the knives might be a pain in the rear if the glue was not hardened. I doubt that there would be any blade damage unless you used some sort of ultra hard, exotic glue I'm not familiar with.

I don't see that a planer would be required if the strips were cut to the right dimension. Did the magazine suggest a planer simply for speed and ease?

[Popeye]

Scrape the squeeze out off first and it'll be fine. Pat

[jackellis]

Another reason for making sure the glue is fully cured is that you don't want your cutting board coming apart inside the planer.

I like the thickness planer for speed, ease, and the fact that I'm not very proficient with hand planes (yet). I just did a first glue-up and my big challenge was getting a level surface to begin with.

[MilDoc]

I have read that fully cured (ie, very hard) glue can chip planer and jointer knives so I always remove it first.

[Russianwolf]

another reason to remove as much as possible before planing is that the bottom of the first pass will not be flat.

[Ken Massingale]

You probably know this, but just in case.
Run it through the planer after glueing the initial strips together. Don't run it through the planer after cutting the strips and reglueing with the end grain up. It's ugly, end grain and plainer blades don't like each other.

[Tom Miller]

You'll definitely want to heed Ken's advice about not planing end grain. At best, it'll look bad, at worst, the piece will explode in your planer, or so I've heard.

Otherwise, a general tip regarding planing after a glue-up (and wiping off the excess glue): send the piece through with the glue lines at an angle to spread out the wear on the blades.

Regards,
Tom

[bigfoot]

[QUOTE=Tom Miller;217682]You'll definitely want to heed Ken's advice about not planing end grain. At best, it'll look bad, at worst, the piece will explode in your planer, or so I've heard.


Have not dared to try this myself, not sure if I ever will, but I did read recently that end grain through a planer is possible with a pair of sacrificial rails glued to the long sides, and very small bites, like under 1/64th. As I said, I'm not gonna try it, but if anyone else wants to risk it, well, post the result..