When to plane

[dugger4]

I will be building four "step stools" for my wife to give for presents this winter. She will be painting each stool and placing creative stencils on each stool based on who will receive the stool. Since she is painting the stools, I chose popular for the wood. The boards are S4S - 4" x 3/4" - got from the local Home Depot. In keeping with the proto type, I would like the stock to be 5/8" thick. I have access to a 36" planer and could either glue up the 15" x 17" "panels"(read sides) and run them through the planer or could cut each board to length, run them through the joiner, then planer, and then glue up. My question is: Which is better OR is there a difference and any knowledge associated with it. Thanks in advance.

Marshall

[Adam Diehl]

You'd be best off to joint, square and plane your stock before gluing up the panels. You'll get tighter and more consistent joints, and you won't have to plane as much off this way. Check out this web page to get an idea why this is the case:

out the rest of the site while you're there; there's lots of good information there.

-AD

[Frank Ketchum]

I would plane them to thickness first, cut to length, joint the edges and then glue up. The reason I would not glue up first and then send it through a planer is you will likely get tearout from the grain going in different directions on different boards.

good luck, Frank

[George]

Gluing stock which is a bit over thickness can compensate for a bit of misalignment as it is planed to final. The OP will have to determine if his stock is ready for gluing as purchased. I would rather glue up the stock which will be crosscut to become panels rather than plane short pieces.

You need one flat face and one square edge on each board for a glue-up. Anything more, like parallel sides or faces is gravy.

[Doug Miller]

If you're gluing up more than two boards side-by-side to make a panel, all of the inner boards need *both* edges square, straight, and parallel.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

[George]

How perceptive. Did you come up with that on your own?

[Richard Clements]

plain 1/16 off before, to make sure there the same thickness then glue and then plain the remaining 1/16, that way it's really 5/8 thick all the way across

[John McCoy]

"dugger4" wrote in news:SD8td.3671$wp.327@lakeread05:

Since you have access to a wide planer, and you're only going to take off 1/8", I would glue up first, then plane to thickness. As Frank said, you may have tearout issues if the grain is going in different directions (altho poplar's not too prone to that), but since you're taking so little off, you can take several very thin passes to minimize the risk of tearout.

John

[J. Clarke]

If he did he's doing better than you are since you neglected to mention it.

[George]

Ok, nit lovers, let me put it this way.

All you need to glue pieces of wood together are complementary edges.

Mental midgets can pick at that one all they want.

[Richard Clements]

[dugger4]