Neander question: face "jointing" and thickness planing

[Dennis M. O'Connor]

I'm curious: Before the wonder of powered rotating blades, how did woodworkers do the equivalent of milling the face of a board with a jointer and planing to a uniform thickness with a thickness planer ?

I've thunk and thunk till my thunker was sore, and I just can't figure how you could do it. But there must be a way, right ?

'Course, I'd just use the big power tools, because I love using big power tools. :-)

[Frank Nakashima]

Hand planes and winding sticks

[Brian]

Rough to thickness with a scrub plane, smooth with a smoother, use gauges to set thickness, use winding sticks to take out twist, maybe a cabinet scraper for the final finish.

What I wonder is how people finish big table top glue-ups without all of the above? I just finished a yellow pine table top, 36" wide by 76" long by

1.5" thick. I power planed and jointed to do the glue up, then did all of the finishing using hand planes and scrapers. Since I only have a 6" jointer and the boards were 12" wide, I couldn't use power tools to get the faces parallel, and I have a fair bit of hand-planing to do to get everying smooth, twist free and parallel. The top weighed over 100 pounds - I really wanted a big sander at a few points!

Brian

[Mike G]

Does the term "hand plane" strike a chord?

[Charles Erskine]

I learned how to do this from Jim Kingshott's video "Bench Planes"

1. Plane the face side flat, checking with straightedge and winding sticks.
2. Plane the face edge perpendicular to the face side, checking with a square.
3. Use a marking gage to layout the thickness using the face side as reference.
4. Plane the second face to the marking gage line. It is now parallel to the face side.
5. Use a panel gage (a marking gage with a long fence) to mark the width.
6. Plane the second edge to the marks. It is now parallel to the face edge.
7. Plane one end to just cleanup in a shooting board using the face edge as reference.
8. Measure the length and mark across the face using a square against the face edge.
9. Plane the other end to length in the shooting board. All six surfaces of the board are now prepped.

Other woodworkers change the order around, but note the similarities to power woodworking: The jointer makes a flat face then the planer makes the other face parallel to the first. The jointer makes a square edge, then the tablesaw makes the other edge parallel to the first. The chopsaw makes the ends square by referencing off the jointed edge.

[Young Carpenter]

For the thicker pieces that needed to be thinner they often had it resawed at the mill. Some did their own resawing. I know the Japanese can do it better than many bandsaws.

[Jeff Gorman]

"Dennis M. O'Connor" wrote

: I'm curious: : Before the wonder of powered rotating blades, : how did woodworkers do the equivalent of : milling the face of a board with a jointer and : planing to a uniform thickness with a thickness planer ? : : I've thunk and thunk till my thunker was sore, : and I just can't figure how you could do it. : But there must be a way, right ?

Dennis might like to try my web site - Planing Notes - Fundamentals'

Jeff G

-- Jeff Gorman, West Yorkshire, UK Email address is username@ISP username is amgron ISP is clara.co.uk Website