Flattening an extremely warped board on the jointer - FineWoodworking

[woodchucker]

This came into by email. I found it pretty damn good .. Hope it helps someone else.

[Leon]

Good info but one has to keep in mind that the board will be considerably thinner depending on the twist, regardless of how you accomplish flattening the board.

[woodchucker]

yep, but he obviously did not loose too much since he was very efficient. Certainly not to be used for 4s boards, as you are already at

3/4.

Granted when he does the top side the results of how much he lost will be seen. But he lost less than I thought. I have often taken out a hand plane to try to do the same. This looked much faster.

[Leon]

Absolutely this was good and I did not meant to down play his method and as he mentioned, I think, the loss of material will be less if you get the board to a near useful length to start with. The longer the board the more you are going to loose.

[John Grossbohlin]

I agree that the longer the board the more you loose so cutting to rough length is useful.... I've also found that ripping to rough width for the purpose often helps... with a bandsaw or handsaw, not with a table saw!

I will also note however that I avoid using boards as twisted as that one if it is already at rough dimension. This as they typically do not stay flat after jointing and thicknessing as the tension in the board changes with the machining. The resulting board being some not so interesting and useful.

[Leon]

I use my track saw to straighten edges on "flat" S2S lumber when ever I buy that. And that is not what you are talking about, but a good tip for removing the some of the cup using the BS.

Because I sell the lions share of my work I have pretty much gone to buying S4S lumber. It saves me, and there fore the customer, a lot of labor cost. Plus the sizes are predictable for yield.

[John Grossbohlin]

A track saw makes a lot of sense for that job...

I have a lot of rough cut Ash drying in my lumber shed at the moment that I sawed with my Alaskan chainsaw mill. I've been debating how I am going to get the first straight edge on the boards... and rip them to rough width. At the moment I am leaning towards using my big bandsaw (36" throat and max board is about 30" with the bark removed) with a power feeder and a tacked on straight edge for the first cut. The bandsaw could handle even the fastest feed rate of the power feeder. I'm thinking that with a pair or three straight edges and a helper or two I could crank the stuff right out. Ripping the boards to rough width would require just the power feeder once the initial straight edge has been sawn... I'm leaning towards flooring with a mix of 3 width boards (say nominal 4, 5, 6") but even at 6" that is a lot of ripping!