Question about some wood I just bought

I just bought 33 board feet of random width cherry for several projects. This is the first wood I've ever bought outside of Home Depot and Lowes.

It is 13/16" thick, and some, if not all, of the boards have lines on them that I assume are from where they were planed.

So is my next step to stop on the way home and buy a planer to put a smooth finish on these boards? I know I could do it with sand paper. I assume I could do it with a jack plane. But that's a WHOLE lot of sanding and/or hand planing.

I kind of thought that I might get an electric planer when I started these projects, just to thin some of the boards. But now I'm thinking it's necessary to smooth these things out.

Am I approaching this correctly?

Thanks,

--Michael

Reply to
ukalumni
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Michael,

My grandfather gave me a lot of rough cut lumber he had been hoarding. It has the lines from what I assume is the sawing process. Not sure it has ever been planed. I got a Delta 22-580 not long after and I'm absolutely amazed at how nice the wood looks on the other side. 2 warnings:

  1. just because it looks nice when it comes out doesn't mean its flat. Still need a jointer for that.

  1. I tried to run my planer without a seperator and the shavings very quickly clogged my dust collector. I made a my own with a small Roughneck garbage can and some scarp wood. Works like a charm.

Good luck with the lumber.

Chuck

Reply to
Woodchuck34

With a sled your planer can also flatten and straighten a bowed and cupped board. For boards up to and a bit longer than 8' you can avoid a jointer for this purpose.

Reply to
Leon

A definite maybe. A brand new planer will give you a finish that is just great. After a little use, it will start getting a few lines and marks and it is just not perfect. Blades wear.

At some point you will want to use that nice planer, but still finish with sanding or scraping for the best finish.

Reply to
Edwin Pawlowski

Some good advice here . The answer is save up and buy a planer that way you can buy rough cut [sawn] timber cheaper and better quality than yo get at HD. Furthermore the rough cut one inch stock at HD is actually 13/16" the rough cut is 1 1/8" so for short lengths at least you can end up with a full inch stock.

When you get a planer get an additional set of blades so that if they do get chipped and leave tell tale marks you can replace them with a perfect set and get the others reground....mjh

Reply to
mike hide

These ridges can't be too high, can they? Is it like the planer knife had knick in it and left a little, 1/8" wide ridge the length of the board? If so, I's suggest that you buy and practice using a set of cabinet scrapers and a burnishing tool (can be bought as a set). Chuck is correct about the need to joint one side flat before plaining. What he heck. This is a great time to sart investing in wood prep machinery.

Reply to
C & E

Not likely. Band mills make such smooth surfaces compared to flexing circular saws that 4/4 is pretty much cut at 1" nowadays versus 1 1/8". Old folks like me remember thicker stock, but mostly it's a case of feed rates and hammering which decided what you could get in the way of oversize stock.

If the lines run parallel to the edges of the boards, they may be nicks. If more or less dickandpurpular, dull knives or fast feed. Either way, if it's curable with a pass with a cabinet scraper, I don't mess with 'em.

Reply to
George

Some advice.

If the boards are wide and have any significant twist or cup you may want to rip them first by the project. If you are looking to clean up

13/16" to 3/4" nominal you may not be able to do so at full width. Ripping them first will help to limit the total cup per board and help to clean them up to a thicker nominal. I would leave them rough until I had a project in mind and then process them as I need them specific to the projects. And, while I've broken the rule before, you should limit widths in glue ups to about 4 inches alternating the grain direction to limit the post process cupping.

I've been processing about 250 bd. ft of walnut this way. wide boards, lots of cup, 13/16" rough. if I didn't rip first I would have probably gotten at best .625" out of it. Ripping first, I'm holding about .725"

It also helps to cut to rough length first to limit the length you have to work on the jointer.

And to get them truely flat, you should face joint them first or use a planer sled.

My $.02 worth, probably worth about that much.

Frank

Reply to
Frank Boettcher

Thanks for all of the good tips. I actually went to HD to buy a planer, and their credit card/check machines were down, and they were only taking cash.

I'm sure my wife will tell me that was an omen that I shouldn't buy.

Thanks,

--Michael

Reply to
ukalumni

I was not referring to the quality of the milling device, rather required industry standards .Perhaps these standards have changed but it was that fourquarter roughcut had to be at least 1 1/8" thickness....mjh

Reply to
mike hide

One thing to keep in mind - if your boards were planed before you bought them, and if it was the planer that left the marks, you might not end up all that much better if you get a cheap planer and re-plane them yourself. Is there a real tool dealer in your area (HD or Lowes don't count)? I'd also reconsider the use of a hand plane - I've been using one along with a card scraper to get rid of machining marks, and I've found that combination to be very effective, much quicker than sandpaper or a ROS, and even sort of fun. (Watching beautiful grain appear from rough-cut boards is really amazing...) Same quality thing applies, though - unless you want to spend a bunch of time tuning a hand plane, plan on spending about $150 on something nice from Steve Knight or Lee Valley. I don't discriminate against "tailed" tools, though - I've been using my router table as a jointer to smooth the edges of boards, and found that to be quick and easy also. Good luck, Andy

Reply to
Andy

Do not do anything with the wood until you have your panels glued up. There will invariably be some mismatch. That is what the extra 1/8" is for. It disappears sanding very quickly. You only need a planer if your panels will fit it. If you are making a 20" wide panel, a planer will be a waste of money. A planer is really designed to make 13/16" boards out of raw stock. Since you bought 13/16" stock...

Reply to
Toller

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