Thickness before final hand planing

[Glenn Samuels]

I am joining 3 boards to make a side of a chest of drawers. They have been jointed and planed on machines. Right now, they are 7/8" thick. I want the finised thickness to be 3/4. I'll run them thru the planer some more but don't want to get too close to the final thickness. How thick should I leave them just before final hand planing assuming they are all fairly equal in thickness. Is 1/16 enough or should I leave 1/8" to work with?

[Jerry Thompson]

My DeWalt 735 will leave a very smooth finish. I leave, maybe, 1/16'' to play with. I can usually use my LN 4 1/2 to get to where I want. If it is a large piece I may leave 1/32 to save sweat.

[Ole Anderson]

OK, I own 2 planes, an old Miller Falls I got from my dad and a new Stanley block plane. I understand there is a magic to hand planing a fine piece of wood, but I guess I haven't ever felt the love. So I would simply run it through my Delta 580 set to 3/4" and finish up with a ROS with 120 then 220 to remove the chatter marks. Guess I am more of a horsepower guy than an armstrong guy. As I reread the post, I am presuming that after the glue up the OP wants to flatten the 3 boards which are now wider than his planer, so hand planing makes sense. My skill level with planes would result in a real mess, so I would try a scraper first, then heavier grit in the ROS if the boards are more than a few thousandths out of alignment.

[Erik Christensen]

the only magic/skill to hand planing is learning how to tune & sharpen one - if somebody put a freshly honed LN smoother in your hands you would think differently about hand work - like the difference between trying to cut 6/4 hard maple on a beat-up, mis-aligned contractor saw with dull combo blade vs using a tuned & aligned 5 hp cabinet saw with sharp carbide rip blade - two very different experiences with vastly different results as to work quality

to the original poster - I vote for 1/8" - yah more work to smooth/dimension but as i understand it you are referring to the individual board thickness BEFORE glue-up - unless you are using biscuits/dominos for board alignment it is easy to get things 1/16" off and then you have nothing to work with

[Alan Bienlein]

the only magic/skill to hand planing is learning how to tune & sharpen one - if somebody put a freshly honed LN smoother in your hands you would think differently about hand work - like the difference between trying to cut 6/4 hard maple on a beat-up, mis-aligned contractor saw with dull combo blade vs using a tuned & aligned 5 hp cabinet saw with sharp carbide rip blade - two very different experiences with vastly different results as to work quality

That's not a very good example as a tuned and aligned contractor saw with a sharp rip blade vs a beat up mis-aligned 5 hp cabinet saw with a dull combo blade will also give you two vastly different quality of work!

Just run it to 3/4" thick and hit it with the ROS.

[Robert LaPlaca]

If you want a glued up panel at 3/4", I would finial thickness them to 3/4" glue the panel up and clean them up with a card scraper or a smoother at the worst. A decent glue up shouldn't need much material removed maybe .002 -.005 range, removing 1/16 or 1/8 is way too much work for a handplane, at least for me. Heck I build 18th century furniture reproductions and I wouldn't think of glueing up a panel 1/16 - 1/8 oversize in thickness to be cleaned up with a handplane, any handplaning I do is remove the machining marks using a smooth with the finest of cuts.. Gook luck

[Glenn Samuels]

I am building a 1780's Pennsylvania style chest on chest. After laying out the boards, I agree that I only need maybe a 32nd removed. Thanks for all your suggestions.