You can't really flatten a 13" board can you?

[Dennis McDonaugh]

I live in downtown San Antonio which isn't exactly forest country so I was surprised that I found long leaf pine 14"-15" inches wide and its just a mile or so from my house. The guy is a furniture maker and he has some sort of bandmill in his back yard which is about two acres. He had all kinds of wood drying under sheds, tarps and out in the open. I bought 130 BF of pine for a table and hutch. He also had pecan, mesquite, oak and other weird wood like china berry. I guess he is an urban forester. The pine I bought was planted in Alamo Heights in 1903 and cut down in 1990. Its been drying in his wood shed for 15 years.

I took the guard off my 8" jointer and jointed half the plank. Then I placed the jointed part on a plywood sled and ran the other side through my planer and then flipped it over and planed the rabbeted side flush.

All three planks are consistently 1" thick, but they aren't what I'd call jointed. I'll be able to glue them up pretty well and the table apron will hold it flat, but its not what I'm used to seeing . Is it because the wood is so wide?

[Jim Becker]

It could be a lot of things including "technique" as well as the actual moisture content and how even the MC is through the wood. In your case, it could be both. When you do the jointing the way you did, you need a jointer with a rabiting ledge so you can run the board through a second pass to get the other side "flat enough" to complete things with the planer. Alternatively a router setup on a sled that rides on rails to face joint the board is an excellent way to deal with wide boards and irregular slabs. The slab is blocked on a surface to hold it in place between the rails and the bit on the router shaves off all the high spots. Once that is done on one side, the other side can be prepared on a planer if one is wide enough or on a wide belt sander in a commercial shop. Or with hand planes... ;)

[Steve Schoene]

I don't think jointing half the board is the way to go. I would just use a flat sled for for the planer, making sure that you shim any gaps so the planer won't "untwist" any twist. Once one surface has been planed, you should then be able to remove it from the sled and thickness the board in the usual way.

Hand planes work pretty well in this case too. Get one side pretty flat, and you can finish off on the planer.