Planing Short Boards

[Scott Welty]

A neighbor asked if I could plane down some shelf boards for him. I said sure. Then he brought them to the shop.
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He just wants them to be flat on both sides. They are about 16-20 inches long and 2+ inches thick.

My method for long boards is to shim and screw the board to a 'carrier board' that is flat. Sending this through the planer 'copies' the flat carrier to the warped or cupped board in question. Once top side is flat I can flip it and do the bottom side. This might work this time too but the boards are so short I won't be able to cut off the snipe as I usually do.

Suggestions on this and any else that would come up because of short boards?

Scott

[Neil Gaskin]

I've had luck attaching longer sacrificial boards to the side of short boards so the snipe occurs on the attached boards.

[Scott Welty]

I've had luck attaching longer sacrificial boards to the side of short boards so the snipe occurs on the attached boards.

Help me...sides? These boards have to be same thickness (height) as boards I want to plane then?

[Randy Heinemann]

You could push them through, ends butted up against each other. The first and last one through may have some snipe on one end, but the ones in the middle should be fine as long as you make sure that you feed them through one right after the other. They are very short though. It would be best if you could joint one side flat first but, if you don't have a wide enough jointer, obviously that won't work and at least some of them seem a little short for that even.

[Andrew Hughes]

Those aren't boards they are blocks of wood.Dirty looking too,do yourself a favor bring them back to him/her and drive over to Homedepot.Buy something there.

[Peter Christensen]

Hot glue them end to end on a board or length of MDF and add some 2x material at both ends to take care of the snipe. Repeat for the second side. You can also flank them on each side of the sled with 2x's like Neil said and do away with the ones on the end. Your neighbour is going to owe you a new set of blades or a sharpening depending on your machine.

[Matt Day]

16" is plenty long enough to go over the jointer and through the planer.

[larry senen]

You shouldn't have snipe so bad that you have to cut it off. Something is not set up right.

[Randy Heinemann]

Sure there are no nails or screws buried inside?

[Bill Dufour]

Run a piece of 1x4 or 2x4 on edge along with the first and last boards in the train. It needs to be ripped first so it is only a little wider then the thickest board is thick.
Bill

[Wayne Lomman]

Randy is correct. You send them through head to tail and you only get a bit of snipe on the first and last. Set yourself up so that you stand beside the machine and feed in with one hand and catch with the other or better still, get your neighbour to tail out. Have all the timber sorted and selected for grain direction etc in advance.

Having said that, some guys have criticised the machine set up. Not everyone has a perfect machine. Old ones wear a hollow in the table. New ones aren't great unless you spend a fortune. All these factors contribute to snipe. To minimise this, as you feed in, hold some upward pressure on the timber until it is held down by both pressure rollers. This is only about a second on time. This will absolutely minimise snipe. Do the same on outfeed as the timber leaves the pressure rollers. You will have plenty of passes through the machine to practice the technique. Spoken from experience with dozens of machines in multiple shops. Cheers

[Scott Welty]

Thanks all...I think I'll try making a train on a carrier board with side boards hot glued on to limit snipe. Stand back and hold mah beer!

Scott

[Charles Lent]

You didn't say what planer you have. I plane shorts of about 16" with my DeWalt 735 with almost no snipe (a little line across the wood about 0.010" deep that sands out easily. My old Delta Lunchbox planer was very bad on snipe and I solved the problem by using scrap 3' long 2 X lumber ripped to the approximate height of the short(s) being planned and then hot glued to the sides of the short (keeper) pieces. As long as there is support for the planer head both before and after the wood that you don't want snipe, you will be fine. If you had a couple of extra shorts the same thickness and you ran every piece through end to end with no significant gaps between them with the first and last piece being the scrap shorts. the pieces in between will be fine and the two scrap pieces will get the snipe. You can put a carrier piece under them if you wish, but it isn't necessary as long as you can manage feeding them through with no gaps between them, and something scrap leading and trailing the good pieces of the same height, you should be fine. Take light cuts and repeat to keep the drive rollers from slipping and clean the drive rollers before you start, again after the first pass on each side (dirt and debris on the unplanned wood will collect on the rollers and reduce the roller feed traction).

Charley

[Bill Dufour]

No need to glue the side board unless it is too narrow to stand up on it's own.
I do not understand why many folks state the sacrificial boards should be attached to the good wood?
Bill

[Jim Morgan]

No need to glue the side board unless it is too narrow to stand up on it's own.
I do not understand why many folks state the sacrificial boards should be attached to the good wood?
Bill

If the good wood has any wind, passing it through the planer without attaching the sacrificial boards will not remove it.

[glenn bradley]

The method of gluing longer 'carrier' boards on to your short material is a valid solution for short boards. This is an exaggeration but, you get the idea.

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The carrier boards are milled true in height and then glued to the passenger material. They should be as tall as the tallest portion of the passenger board to allow the feed rollers to control the work. Once the passenger material is milled true, the carrier boards are ripped off at the tablesaw.

The boards you are talking about are long enough to be jointed and planed on my machines. It seems your snipe problem is what is driving this discussion. The amount of snipe you describe is a good reason for tuning up your machine. I prefer none and align my planer for that. If you have one of the lunchbox planers that is renowned for unavoidable snipe, another member once posted something like this as his solution as opposed to creating a burn pile made out of lots of wasted cutoff ends.

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Instead you end up with a burn pile made out of lots of wasted carrier material. A tedious solution to be sure but, we either spend time or money in the shop. One way or the other, ya gotta pay :).

[andy bessette]

16" is plenty long enough to go over the jointer and through the planer.

This. Just run them through.

My old 13" Delta thickness plane leaves no snipe.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Thanks all...I think I'll try making a train on a carrier board with side boards hot glued on to limit snipe. Stand back and hold mah beer!

Nope - don't use hot glue.
Use a piece of newspaper in between the block and the carrier board & use Elmer's School Glue.

When you're all done, a sharp blade will separate the wood & a flush with water will leave everything all nice and clean and free of glue.

[Wayne Lomman]

This is the most complicated series of 'solutions' to a problem I have ever seen. 16" long is not planing shorts. It is a good handy length that is common as dirt for furniture making. Any chairman's has planed thousands like this. There is no need for complex jigs, gluing, screwing or anything other than machining. It does not even need a flash planer. The OP does not need to be led up the garden path like this. Cheers

[John Lanciani]

This is the most complicated series of 'solutions' to a problem I have ever seen. 16" long is not planing shorts. It is a good handy length that is common as dirt for furniture making. Any chairman's has planed thousands like this. There is no need for complex jigs, gluing, screwing or anything other than machining. It does not even need a flash planer. The OP does not need to be led up the garden path like this. Cheers

+1. If the boards are longer than the distance between the infeed and outfeed rollers of the planer in use then you're good to go. Based on the pics the wood started life as dunnage or cribbing anyways, and they are "shelf boards for the neighbor". Snipe is the last thing I'd be worried about.

Additionally, there looks to be a pretty significant difference in thickness between the boards, they will need to be worked down to a common thickness one at a time anyways.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi, at 16" long they can be planed as is.

That said, those look like candidates for the fireplace, old, possibly with sand, grit or nails in them, I would buy the neighbor some wood and keep those for roasting marshmallows.........Rod.

[Scott Welty]

OK...early results are in. I went with just 2 blocks at a time due to the weight. I shimmed and screwed them to a carrier board and then screwed 'side boards' a little higher than the thickness of the blocks. Several passes through the planer (it's a 12" Delta) and I got one flat side. Flipped them and now I don't need a carrier. Just screwed the snipe protection boards back on and again several passes. One thing learned...On this second run the planer was having a hard time dragging these slugs through the machine. I stopped and waxed both the machine platforms and the bottom of the slugs. Wow...now they went through like you-know-what through a goose! Jointed the edges then and I'm calling these two done!
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Picture shows 3 in a line but I backed off to two.

Scott

[Rob Damon]

Get out a handplane and flatten one side. Doesn't have to be perfect. Let the neighbor help with this part.

Then run it through the planer. 16" is not too short as mentioned by others.

[Johanna Johanson]

Those aren't boards they are blocks of wood.Dirty looking too,do yourself a favor bring them back to him/her and drive over to Homedepot.Buy something there.

I agree with Andrew. I would not want to run those on any of my equipment - too likely to have sand or metal in them.

[Scott Welty]

All done...and they came out ok. Bar was set pretty low but all sides are flat and smooth now and yes I do need new planer blades now!

Thanks everybody!

Scott

[Andrew Hughes]

The wood does have a nice smoky brown look to it.I guess new knives are a small price to pay for working well seasoned reclaimed wood.
Good job.