Planing small stock

[Chris S Anderson]

This morning, I cut 4 pieces of oak that were 3x3x1. My plan was to practice some hand dovetailing and make the sides of a box. I cut them close to size with a miter saw, but they each had a bevel on the end grain and they were not flat.

I first tried to joint them with a #7, but it was too big and unwieldy, so I decided to use my dewalt planer to true these pieces.

Thickness would be easy. I can flatten each piece with my hand plane and then send them through for the other unflattened side. But how would I set up my planer for doing the ends? I don't have an electric jointer, and my #7 hand jointer was too big and kept rounding one side or making uneven ends. I want to use my Dewalt planer for this, but I'm a little confused as how to send the pieces through. I was going to clamp them all together, and stand them up, but the smallest clamp I have is 12" and that does not give a lot of room for sending them through the planer. I could send them through individually, but would the planer make them stand on end? Or would they topple? Also, these are small pieces and I don't want my hand getting close to the blades.

Thanks,

Chris

[dan sherman]

Chris,

Are you saying you want to plane the 3" x 1" end grain side, or the 3" x 1" long grain side?

Either way 3" is to short, to send through a power planer, check your owners manual and see what the minimum length allowed is (it's probably like 12" or 15"). Never send end grain (at least hardwood) through a power planer with steel blades, or you will find yourself shopping for new blades after one pass. Imo for boards this small you either need a cross cut sled for the table saw, or a shooting board.

[Chris S Anderson]

In the process of making a shooting board now. Thanks! I was going to put it off till next weekend, but I can really use it for this project.

[Tri Hoang]

I practiced my dovetail skill using two 20" boards. I take a long piece, joint it flat/square and cut it in half. Once done, I just cut about 3" off the ends. The problem with using small pieces is that you can't effectively clamp them.

[Chip Lindley]

Planing such small pieces is NOT recommended under any curcumstance. All pieces could be clamped together on a *carrier board* and sent through the planer. Rather than spend time on building the jig, it might be easier/faster to use a sanding disc in your TS to square the edges.

[harry strasil]

sounds like you got it backwards, prep first, use scrap to make sure miter saw is cutting square, then cut to length

[Rick Gooden]

Start over. Dimension a longer board (3x1x15), then cut to length on the miter saw. Stay safe.

[Chris S Anderson]

sounds like you got it backwards, prep first, use scrap to make sure miter saw is cutting square, then cut to length

The miter is square, my planing isn't :(. I could switch to a finish blade, but I wanted to practice as much as I could with my planes, but it was just too small a surface for me to attack and keep it square. I would have been worlds smarter to plane the larger stock, I just got ahead of myself.

I was thinking that I could easily match the four pieces up with my hand planes, but that didn't pan out.

[Joe Kieve]

Chris,
I agree with most of the others. Plane a longer board and then cut it to length. A good rule of thumb is not to plane anything shorter than the length of the blades, hence 12 or 13 inches. And....if you had a jointer, you definitely wouldn't want to joint anything that short. You would end up having your fingers all the same length.

Stay safe!

joe

[Tony Shea]

Start over. All lumber milling should be long before cutting peices to the precise size that they need to be. The only thing that should be left is to clean up a put together box with some hand or power tools.

[mike holden]

Chris,
for small stock, flip your #7 over and put it bottom up in your vise, then move the stock across the plane bottom.
Simple, but keep your fingers up (damhikt- grin!)
Mike

[Quesne Ouaques]

I have been jointing small pieces on the router table for many years. When I have a piece of wood that is too small or delicate to use my 6" jointer, I use the router table. Of course, larger blocks of wood are used to guide the workpiece, so it's very safe. Just a couple of days ago, I jointed a piece of Australian lacewood that measured 3/4" x 1" x 6". I needed it to repair some holes created by blown-out end grain.

My jointer fence for the router table consists of a nice quality piece of 3/4 inch ply (about 24" by 10") laminated across the entire surface with vertical-quality Wilson-Art formica material. The outfeed table consists of a second piece of formica laminated on top of the first, and covering the entire left half of the fence surface. Thus, my depth-of-cut is fixed at about .028" (less than 1/32").

My own experience with this technique is good. The router table and fence must be set to exactly 90 degrees, of course, and your maximum board thickness will depend on the height of your longest straight bit. The greatest practical limitation, however, comes in the length of the pieces that can be jointed. The fence infeed and outfeed lengths will determine the size of the piece that your setup can handle.

Some examples of other folks using this method, as well as commercially available products geared to this application:

http://www.woodshopdemos.com/rtrplnr.htm

http://www.woodworkingtips.com/etips/etip031114wb.html

http://www.woodworkingtips.com/pdf/vol3-JointingRouterTable.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Rockler-Router-Table-Jointing-Shims/dp/B001DT3356

For face-jointing small parts I use a planer sled. I hot-glue the parts down to a 3/4" plywood sled. I usually glue sacraficial runners on either side of the workpiece to avoid snipe. Safe and effective. Works like a charm :-) The hot glue cracks off easily with you fingers, or with a little help from a chisel.

[Floyd Mah]

Having made a few dovetail joints, one of the skills that I've found necessary at the end of the fitting and glue-up is to plane the ends of the joint to be flush with the sides. Why not practice this with your small pieces first? Just construct a right angle with two pieces of hardwood and clamp to your workbench, one leg down and one leg across the top. Clamp the small work-piece to the down leg, with the uneven end proud of the upper piece. Now take your plane and trim your work-piece. If you find that the pressure of the plane makes the work-piece drift downwards, just clamp another support piece below it on the down-leg. By the way, a #7 plane is waaay to big for such small work. You need a plane the size of a block plane or #3 for the work you are considering.