Help in flattening table top WITHOUT belt sander.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi All, I could use some help in flattening a table top 14" x 26" made of curly maple. It was slightly dished lengthwise with the edges being higher than the center by about <1/16". I used a Stanley #4 going 45 degrees from side to side in both directions but the dished out area was still there. It was about <1/16 out of flat.

So I tried to lower the sides since they were higher but I still couldn't get it flat. My plane is sharp and pretty well tuned. What am I doing wrong. Please help as I don't want to go back to my dreaded belt sander for this job. I want to use a plane. Thanks.

[Michael Perata]

Alan

What size plane are you using. I would recommend a #7 to get the piece flat and then a #4 / 4 1/2 to get it finished.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi Michael, I'm using the #4 for the whole job. Sounds like I need a bigger plane? Thanks.

[Chris Padilla]

Alan,

I assume you are using a straight-edge or winding sticks of some kind to gauge your high/low areas? Mark the areas with chalk so you know for sure what is high and low.

If it is dished and the sides are high, it seems logical to me to knock those down but be sure that they are and be sure to mark things clearly...it is easy to get lost.

[Corvin Alstot]

Hi Michael, I'm using the #4 for the whole job. Sounds like I need a bigger plane? Thanks.
Alan/ You need a longer plane, the Stanley #4 is about 9" long and is a great
smoother but not a great plane for flattening. You will need a jointer for this task.
A Stanley #7 is about 22" long and the # 8 is 24" long. It will not ride in
the concaved area like your #4.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Alan,

I assume you are using a straight-edge or winding sticks of some kind to gauge your high/low areas? Mark the areas with chalk so you know for sure what is high and low.

If it is dished and the sides are high, it seems logical to me to knock those down but be sure that they are and be sure to mark things clearly...it is easy to get lost.

Thanks Chris, I am using a straight edge and marking the spots that are high and working on them. I guess I'm on the right track. How are things in sunny Kailfornya? :)

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Alan/ You need a longer plane, the Stanley #4 is about 9" long and is a great
smoother but not a great plane for flattening. You will need a jointer for this task.
A Stanley #7 is about 22" long and the # 8 is 24" long. It will not ride in
the concaved area like your #4.

Thanks Corvin, I have a #7 so I can give that a try. I just have a little tuning to do to get it ready or maybe a lot if the sole need flattening. Man that's a lot of plane to flatten. :)

[Chris Barton]

Hi Alan,


This seems like a reasonably small table so I will mention a few options:

1) Contact a local cabinet shop and see if they would run it through their conveyor belt or drum sander for a couple of bucks.

2) Borrow a long jointer plane from a friend and plane by hand.

3) Use screws to pull it flat against the support rails.

Chris

PS: If you want to come to Nasville with it you can run it through my Performax 22-44...

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi Alan,


This seems like a reasonably small table so I will mention a few options:

1) Contact a local cabinet shop and see if they would run it through their conveyor belt or drum sander for a couple of bucks.

2) Borrow a long jointer plane from a friend and plane by hand.

3) Use screws to pull it flat against the support rails.

Chris

PS: If you want to come to Nasville with it you can run it through my Performax 22-44...

Thanks Chris. I'm trying to do this without sanding or with very little sanding. The jointer plane option is the way I want to go. Thanks.

[Keith Outten]

Alan,

Come on down to Virginia, I can machine your table top in just a few minutes on my ShopBot.

[Alan Turner]

Alan,

Come on down to Virginia, I can machine your table top in just a few minutes on my ShopBot.
Or, stop by Philadelphia, and I'll put it on a 20" jointer.

[Glenn Crocker]

Start with your sharp #7; it doesn't have to be perfectly tuned. It'll just take a little longer. Once the top is flat, finish with the better tuned #4.

When I built my bench (24x72 maple top with wandering grain) I had the options of using my planes, someone else's abrasive planer, and someone else's big Oliver planer. The largest surface I'd previously hand planed was about 6"x18".

I wanted to do it myself.

After glueup, the bench top was just over 1/8" out of flat and with a similar twist. It took right at five hours at a leisurely pace to flatten both sides and smooth the top to the thin side of 1/32" when referenced to a 48" straightedge. My WWI era #7 and#4 were well sharpened but not as well tuned as they are now. I did experience minimal tearout; further tuning would have helped with that.
You can do the job with the tools you have. Good shavings!
Glenn

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Start with your sharp #7; it doesn't have to be perfectly tuned. It'll just take a little longer. Once the top is flat, finish with the better tuned #4.

When I built my bench (24x72 maple top with wandering grain) I had the options of using my planes, someone else's abrasive planer, and someone else's big Oliver planer. The largest surface I'd previously hand planed was about 6"x18".

I wanted to do it myself.

After glueup, the bench top was just over 1/8" out of flat and with a similar twist. It took right at five hours at a leisurely pace to flatten both sides and smooth the top to the thin side of 1/32" when referenced to a 48" straightedge. My WWI era #7 and#4 were well sharpened but not as well tuned as they are now. I did experience minimal tearout; further tuning would have helped with that.
You can do the job with the tools you have. Good shavings!
Glenn

Thanks Glenn, That's just what I want to hear! In the future I'll be building a bench similar to yours and want to be able to flatten it "the proper way". :)
I'm going to sharpen up that #7 right now. Thanks again for your advise. Alan

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Thanks Keith and Alan and Keith what is a "shop bot"? I'm going to flatten this top with planes even if it comes out to be 1/4" thick. :) I'm really tired of breathing in saw dust.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Or, stop by Philadelphia, and I'll put it on a 20" jointer.

20" jointer! Yikes! Oh Alan that's just not fair. :) I'm jealous.

[Roy Wall]

Alan,

Do you realize this is the perfect opportunity to justify a LN #7 or #8?:)

[Keith Outten]

Thanks Keith and Alan and Keith what is a "shop bot"? I'm going to flatten this top with planes even if it comes out to be 1/4" thick. :) I'm really tired of breathing in saw dust.

Alan, a ShopBot is a CNC Router. Mine has a 4 foot by 8 foot table so flattening large table tops is a snap. Periodically I have to machine the table top MDF spoil board which cleans up all the places where the router bit has been below the surface...it takes only 12 minutes to machine the entire 4 by 8 spoil board using a 1 1/8" dia router bit :)

Very Cool Stuff

I understand that you want to do the job with your hand plane, just thought I would offer to help :rolleyes:

[Tim Sproul]

You can continue to use your #4 until you get reasonably flat. You should only be working the ends of the top and not the entire surface.

Once you get the top to a reasonably flat surface - you cannot detect bow or cup or twist using straight edge and winding sticks or other method(s), then proceed with a good long plane to get dead flat. You will see daylight under the straight edge but it should be obvious the surface is flat since daylight will peak out from spots along the entire length of the straight edge. After planing with a good long plane like a #7, then you should be dead flat and not see daylight anywhere under the straight edge.

There is a reason why traditional face jointing by hand proceeds in 3 steps....scrub, jack then try or jointer......it is A LOT of work to flatten a warped board with a try or jointer plane alone. These are set up for fairly fine cuts.....if you can take a maximum of 4 mils per pass and have 60-some mils of thickness (~1/16 inch) to reduce and given perhaps 10 or so strokes to cover the entire width...that translates into 150 or so passes with a try plane taking rather thick shavings. Thick shavings relative to what a plane is set up for normally means a lot of effort to push the plane. You could instead have a jack set up to take 10 or 15 mils per pass....the jack is a lighter plane too....and get to flat in only 40 strokes or so......and then take perhaps 20 strokes or so with the try/jointer to get dead flat. Scrubs and jacks were quite abundant in most pre-machinery shops for a good reason. You'll also spend less time sharpening since the sharpness of a cambered jack iron isn't as critical as the sharpness of straight or slightly cambered jointer iron.

For faster removal of stock, it is good to have a jack plane that has a cambered iron. For a jack, you don't want heavy camber but something like a 6 inch radius is good. If your top was close to flat already, then going with just a long plane works well....but since the top isn't close to flat - use the appropriate planes.

I have no power jointer.....and so face joint and edge joint by hand. I'm not totally crazy though....I use a power thicknesser.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Thanks all for your help. Tim, that was a great description of the process. But what do you mean by " doing just the ends"?

[Tim Sproul]

But what do you mean by " doing just the ends"?

Going back to your original post...that should be edges rather than ends.

Just plane the high spots is a more generic way of saying it.

[Peter Mc Mahon]

Hi Tim. I would tend to argue and say that there are 3 steps in surfacing a board, srub, jointer, and smooth. Obviously a scrub is required, but following that is a 7 or 8. The bigger the better. You are not lifting the plane so personally I would not say that weight is an issue. A 8 is wider and longer so the job will get done faster and more accurately. Why use another plane for the same purpose? A 8 can take a heavier shaving than a jack because of the added mass. I believe in using a slightly cambered blade [a finish smooth type camber]. A jack will not remove wood as fast as a scrub, and it will not flatten as accurately as a #8, it is just a in-between plane that I feel creates more work, and as for speed of sharpening I cannot imagine that to be an issue. It is faster to sharpen a straight blade [or smoothing type camber] than it is to sharpen a heavily radiused blade. Peter

[Tim Sproul]

.....You are not lifting the plane so personally I would not say that weight is an issue.....

Going on my limited experience, weight matters a lot and it makes quite a difference when you are not using machines. If you're smoothing, weight isn't such a factor because it should only take 1, 2, maybe 3 passes. When dressing rough lumber, weight AND length of a plane make quite a difference because heavier and/or longer planes are more fatigueing to move around. This is my experience and I think I could put it into simple physics terms of inertia and angular momentum and acceleration and energy and work but I didn't do too well in college physics.

I turn to a jack following the scrub because the scrub is used to really hog material. For most face jointing and edge jointing, I normally don't use a scrub unless the board is thick and warped badly. My jack has a light camber on it's iron but it still takes quite a number of passes to remove those tracks with a try/jointer plane. It takes quite a few more than that if I go straight from scrub to try/jointer. My scrub tends to see a lot of use if I have a board wider than 14 inches as my power thicknesser will only accomodate 15 inches and it is a bear to feed it 15 inch wide boards of any appreciable length.

I consider final smoothing a part of finishing rather than a part of dressing or milling lumber. The Normite's equivalent to final smoothing is sanding.


.....It is faster to sharpen a straight blade [or smoothing type camber] than it is to sharpen a heavily radiused blade.

Once shaped, I find the radiused blade is faster. Though this is using a grinder with a felt wheel charged with honing compound or, more recently, the Veritas Mk.II power sharpener. I've not gotten good results with either trying to do final honing of straight edged cutters so that means going through the waterstones. My Shaptons are fast but don't compare to a mechanized sharpening system for speed....the trade-off is edge quality but for scrubs and jacks, edge quality isn't so much an issue.


YMMV

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Going back to your original post...that should be edges rather than ends.

Just plane the high spots is a more generic way of saying it.

Thanks Tim; it makes sense to me now.

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Alan,

Do you realize this is the perfect opportunity to justify a LN #7 or #8?:)

Hi Roy, But of course I do. I never miss a chance to buy a new tool. :) But I only try to buy things I think I'll use and since I have nos. 6,7 & 8 Stanley planes..... Now if I can only get those big old planes tuned up. :(