Need advice on plane

[Bill Jobe]

I have 5" thick slab of walnut 6' long, bark on, that I've had for a few years. It has not been planed since I had it kiln dried. It measures almost 2' at its widest point. The sawmill I work with does not have a planer that big.

What would be the ideal hand plane to flatten this slab so I can make a coffee table out of it?
I have 2 others similar in size so I don't mind paying for a very good one.

[Chris Farmer]

I think the ideal solution would be to use a router sled to flatten. Using a router sled is already time consuming, I can't imagine what hand planing a piece like that would take...

[Jacob Mac]

If it is relatively twist free and doesn't need a lot of work, a jack plane and then a #7 or #8. At least that's how I would approach it.

[Chris Farmer]

If it is relatively twist free and doesn't need a lot of work, a jack plane and then a #7 or #8. At least that's how I would approach it.

Yeah, I guess it would depend on how flat it is now...

[Jim Koepke]

Too bad you aren't around here, there is a private mill operator who does have large enough equipment.

Your selection of planes would depend on how much material needs to be removed to satisfactorily flatten the surface. If it has deep saw marks you may want to camber a blade in a jack plane or even a jumbo jack like a #6. Then a less cambered blade or a straight blade in the #6 could be used to get it all the way to finish or use a smoother if you want a super smooth suface.

You could also maybe get by without the 'scrub' plane and just use a jointer like a #7 or #8. This would be the option if there weren't any deep saw marks or other areas that needed a lot of material removed.

The suggestion by Jacob is also valid. That is almost the standard of woodworking by hand. Rough wood gets hit with a jack plane set up like a scrub plane and then the long planes come in behind to make a large flat surface.

There is more than one way to do this.

From the wording of your question it sounds like this would be your first hand plane. Is that correct?

jtk

[Stanley Covington]

You really need two planes. The first is called a scrub plane, and is used cross-grain or at an angle to the direction of the board's grain to hog wood.

The second plane is used to further level and smooth the board's surface. A jack (No.5 or 5-1/2), a foreplane (No.6) or jointer (No 7 or 8) would do the job.

A third plane would be useful for final finishing. A No. 4 or 4-1/2 would do the job.

Alternately, you could use a No.4 or No.5 as a scrub plane if you opened the mouth and ground the blade with a large curvature, and then used the same plane for later operations with a straight blade. There is a reason they called the No.5 a "Jack Plane," as in "Jack-of-all-Trades."

[Bill Jobe]

Too bad you aren't around here, there is a private mill operator who does have large enough equipment.

Your selection of planes would depend on how much material needs to be removed to satisfactorily flatten the surface. If it has deep saw marks you may want to camber a blade in a jack plane or even a jumbo jack like a #6. Then a less cambered blade or a straight blade in the #6 could be used to get it all the way to finish or use a smoother if you want a super smooth suface.

You could also maybe get by without the 'scrub' plane and just use a jointer like a #7 or #8. This would be the option if there weren't any deep saw marks or other areas that needed a lot of material removed.

The suggestion by Jacob is also valid. That is almost the standard of woodworking by hand. Rough wood gets hit with a jack plane set up like a scrub plane and then the long planes come in behind to make a large flat surface.

There is more than one way to do this.

From the wording of your question it sounds like this would be your first hand plane. Is that correct?

jtk

Yes sir. Other than a 7" long MintCraft.

[Bill Jobe]

So it looks like I'd save a lot of money if I could find someone with a power planer big enough.
But then I wouldn't have all those nice planes.
I have lots of time. Temps here are far to cold to use the lathe in the garage. A lathe I have to drag to the overhead door opening and place fans behind me. Too cold for that.
And I refuse to use the HF bagged dust collector. Otherwise I could fire up a heater and work out in the garage.
I thought maybe hand planing in the house would not kick up fine dust?
Am I correct about that?
I became very sick a few years ago working in the garage without proper dust removal. Took me months to get over that.

[David Eisenhauer]

One thing about using hand planes, it would most likely knock out the need for lots of shop heating and it also does not require a dust collector. You could also do it inside the house if you wanted. To do the work, first you would need a sturdy work surface (bench/table/etc) to work on and would require that you shim or wedge the bottom surface so it was stable before starting if the slab is not fairly flat and a way to prevent the slab from moving while you are planning it. Woodworking benches are designed to do this, but any sturdy work surface of sufficient size probably can be adapted to do the work. The other guys told you about the planes, but for me, a scrub plane would only be used if the slab is way out of flat. But yeah, basic procedure is jack plane for main wood removal to get rid of humps, twist, main saw marks, etc - try or jointer plane for flattening the whole slab into one plane, then a smoother plane to get it pretty. Do one side (maybe minus the smoothing), then use that side as a bench reference to mark a consistent thickness line near the edge (or at a pre-determined thickness) of the unplanned surface. Repeat for second side. Will keep you warm and, more importantly, start you on the road to learning how to sharpen plane irons (and chisels as well). The iron sharpening will be an important part of the process. It is the kind of work that you can start and stop at any point without hurting the overall operation other than to affect the time line.

[don wilwol]

Just Google "course medium fine hand planing" there are endless articles. But be careful. The hand plane thing is addicting.

[Bradley Gray]

Where are you located? If you were close enough I do have a thickness planer that big. I'm sure there are others on the forum that could help you with this.

[Todd Stock]

Unless you get into period reenactment or are electron-deprived, knock the bulk of the work out with a handheld planer (DeWalt 3-1/4"...$130 new), then move to hand planes. A 5" thick x 24" x 6' live edged coffee table will look little heavy, so thinning to 2"-3" would seem to be a part of the job.

Another option is to work the surface with an adze following the hand-held power planer if the more rustic, hand-hewn look appeals. Steep learning curve and steel-toed boots for the adze, but at 5" thickness, you could lose a lot of wood along the way to minimum competence (in sharpening and use) before getting close to the 2-1/2" thickness that I might be tempted to use for a live-edge table of that size. Like work with an axe or even a vigorously-used plane, adze work will keep you reasonably warm, so a little winter chill in the work area should not be a big problem.

[Derek Cohen]

A 5" thick x 24" x 6' live edged coffee table will look little heavy, so thinning to 2"-3" would seem to be a part of the job.

Quite agree.

However, planing away 2" is not doable. I suggest that you take the slab to a mill or someone with a VERY large bandsaw (pro shop), and have them resaw it for you.

If you cannot find someone with large enough equipment, then you will be faced with ripping the 24" wide board into widths that you can manage. Number them, then resaw to 2 1/2", and glue them back in the same order.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Phil Mueller]

Bill, I can’t add much to the above, except my experience is that when cross grain planing (jack/scrub), it results in a lot more shavings/dust than you would get from long grain planing. Just something to keep in mind if you decide to do this in the house.

[Joe A Faulkner]

Search for flattening slabs with handplanes you tube videos. David Moore furniture has a good YouTube on this. There are others you should checkout as well. The process is similar to flattening any board with hand planes. Many here have flattened wide work bench tops using handplanes. With sharp equipment it isn’t that hard and can be done in a few hours. The key is to take your time and have sharp blades. If you are drawn to hand tool work then eventually you likely will want either a number 5 jack ore bevel down jack plane and a no 7 or 8 jointer and a no 4 smoother plus a little block plane. This assumes you go with western style metal handplanes. Those four planes are common items in most western style hand tool shops and pretty much address flattening, smoothing and jointing needs for standard cabinetry and furniture making.

[Derek Cohen]

Guys, levelling the slab with hand planes is only part of the problem. The slab is too thick to use as is. It needs to be resawn. Planing is straightforward. Resawing is not.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[James Pallas]

Bill, if you want a 5" top that is up to you. Keep in mind that it is like having a lion for a pet. A lion is beautiful but in the end it will do as it wants and you can't control it. I think I would look for someone with a bandsaw mill that is good with it and resaw it. Keeping in mind that if you cut say 2" off of it you will need to let it rest for a while before you flatten it. As far as planes go, Jack, jointer, smoother. A lot like flattening a bench. Good luck with your project. Please post some progress pictures. It should be fun.
Jim

[Todd Stock]

Quite agree.

However, planing away 2" is not doable.

Derek

Now you tell me...was a good way to learn how to dub and that a back-bevel is your buddy.

[Oskar Sedell]

Agreed, it would be very nice to see some pics from the progress. Dereks suggestion of ripping the board into narrower parts has some merit. If the slab is very cupped, this is a way to reduce the amount of flattening needed. Ripping say in the middle, then resaw, and then joint the edges so that the glue-up is as flat as possible. This is how I did when glueing up my workbench top.

[Pete Taran]

Seems to me the only practical way to make this thinner is to plane it away via automated means. Bandmills and saw mills will be hard pressed to grip 5" on edge and get it anywhere close to the middle. You could look for someone with a chainsaw mill and a 30" bar and go wide of the mark, but seems like a huge hassle. If it were me, I'd look for a local yard with a 30" planer and have them get it to within a 1/4" of you desired thickness. If you then want to work at the final surface with hand planes, you can have at it.

The router sled idea, which I've mentioned before, is a worthy method to accomplish this. You could put the bad side up and work at a 1/4 cut until the bottom is flat. Then you can flip it bad side down and go at it from the top. It is surprisingly accurate and will set you up perfectly for final hand planing of the top. Working with hand tools is fun, but this task is akin to digging your way out of Alcatraz with a teaspoon and garden trowel.

It just occurred to me, you could take a circular saw and set it for a 2" depth of cut and score the top every inch on one side. Once you are done, get your favorite mallet and framing chisel and work along the score marks, busting that waste away. It will look ugly when you are done, but that will give you a spot to work with your handplanes. If you attempt to true the top before you score, the bottom of the saw cuts will be a good reference point to where you have to plane to. Might be your best bet considering your desire to work it with hand tools.

[Warren Mickley]

For flattening I think a beech jack plane is the best option. If you want a premium plane I recommend Steve Voigt.

I did not see anything suggesting that Bill wanted a thinner plank. It sounds as if he got the three planks cut to his specifications. If I wanted to resaw the plank by machine I would look for a horizontal band mill or a horizontal resaw. To cut by hand I would use a pit saw or a four foot veneer saw.

[Bob Leistner]

That slab has enough wood in it to make a whole coffee table and two end tables and plenty to spare. Cut it length wise in half and you'll be able to find plenty of bandsaws that can resaw that into 4/4 stock. Then you can use that to your best advantage. Even keep a section at 8/4 for your leg stock if you wish. A 5 inch thick coffee table top is going to look bad, period.

[Simon MacGowen]

A 5 inch thick coffee table top is going to look bad, period.


+1, unless one wants a stump-style coffee table.

There are many ways or flattening projects that one can do with hand tools. But why begin the path with something like this?

Simon

[Bill Jobe]

I know that's thick but I figured with equally heavy legs the proportions would downplay the top's massive size. Maybe not.
Anyway, that has been my plan up til now. Maybe I should be thinking about having it sawn in 2.
The wife likes the idea of the 5", so that's in my favor. She also wants to retain the full live edge on the sides....bark on.
It ain't going to happen right away, anyway. Too many promises of bowls to fill. Three of my 4 siblings and a half dozen other people keep hammering me for their bowl.
Should have kept the lathe secret for a while. At least til I figure out what I'm doing.

[Bill Jobe]

Just watched one YouTube video. That looks like a lot of work.

[Mike Holbrook]

Just to put this work in context. You may want to watch a few Mr. Chickadee videos. This guy fells logs, hews timbers from the logs and builds things with them. He built a log cabin and a workshop, with some help from his wife. He uses old timber framing joints/techniques to make buildings from his hand hewn timbers. All the work is done with hand tools, mostly by the one guy. He has a whole series of videos on YouTube. The point being that solutions are often in the skill set of the woodworker more than the specific tools.

https://youtu.be/s8GP68nLpEY (https://youtu.be/s8GP68nLpEY)

Here are the planes I typically use for this type work:
378219

Top left is a Veritas Custom 5 1/2, next to it is a Custom #5, the wood plane on the back row is an EMC scrub, the last plane is a Veritas LA Jack. The wood scrub takes a very narrow shaving which so far has limited how much it gets used, at least on this red oak log. The Custom #5 has moderate to heavy camber as does the 5 1/2. I like a heavier plane for this work as the weight helps get through knots and heavy shavings. I like the chip breakers and adjustable mouths on the Veritas planes. Stanley planes adjust mouth openings via the frog which in my experience dramatically reduces the speed and accuracy of adjusting the opening. One may want to consider that this work dulls blades fairly fast. The Veritas screws, on either side of the plane blade, allow one to-remove the blade and sharpen it, without messing with how the blade was set up. This speeds up sharpening and reduces the fiddling with depth & side to side adjustments significantly. I would not consider any plane without an adjustable mouth for this type work, as I find adjusting the mouth opening helpful, depending on the species of wood, size/shape of shaving......The LA Jack comes in handy with “interesting” grain patterns or situations where the bevel down planes just are not “cutting it”. Approaching the wood from a different plane angle sometimes helps. Sometimes taking a wider but narrower shaving can speed the work up. Think total volume of shaving.

Clean up entails a large dust/chip container and a broom, although I may use a shop vac if I want the floor or bench cleaner.

378220

[Brian Holcombe]

I would leave that slab heavy, resawing 5” flat sawn material is going to yield two hugely cupped boards that are going to finish out much thinner, like 1.5”.

I resaw a lot, it’s a dangerous game :D whenever I cut down heavy material I saw off the faces and set them aside, they usually cup to the point of being useless, then I work with whatever remains.

[ernest dubois]

I would leave that slab heavy, resawing 5” flat sawn material is going to yield two hugely cupped boards that are going to finish out much thinner, like 1.5”.

I resaw a lot, it’s a dangerous game :D whenever I cut down heavy material I saw off the faces and set them aside, they usually cup to the point of being useless, then I work with whatever remains.


This is why successful re-sawing usually involves ripping first.

Seems I remember a film about George Nakashima, after all this is what the task at hand is revolving around, and it went into the elaborate and extensive care taken to season his woods. Even so, I have to wonder how the people with some of his pieces have experienced their lives together.

[Bill Jobe]

Mike, I admire Mr. Chickadee's skills. Makes me wish I had gotten into woodworking sooner in life. I like that kind of doing the job in a world where most everything has been taken over by technology. On the other hand, at almost 68 it looks to be too late in life to develop those skills.
Don't get me wrong...with many years of CNC behind my belt I also love the feeling I get knowing how to control machines with programs. I was fortunate in that I had the freedom to edit programs delivered to me by "guys up front", or writing my own.
I do realize that skill is no longer of any worth...the programs written with software instead of by machine operators. Nothing made my day more interesting and rewarding , as well as shorter, than problem solving via program editing.

[Pete Taran]

Bill,

One of my Dad's greatest regrets, who is now 80, is not just doing stuff he wanted to when he was "younger". No one knows how much time they have and how well their body will fare in the later years. If there is something that you want to do, I say get about doing it and don't worry about how old you are. With the man off your back, now is the perfect time to do things you always wanted to.

FWIW

Pete

[Brian Holcombe]

This is why successful re-sawing usually involves ripping first.

Seems I remember a film about George Nakashima, after all this is what the task at hand is revolving around, and it went into the elaborate and extensive care taken to season his woods. Even so, I have to wonder how the people with some of his pieces have experienced their lives together.

While I agree, If you rip it down it’s no longer a slab.

I can’t speak for Nakashima, but I’ve never seen anything thicker than 8/4 for table tops from
them. The exception being his peace altars which are probably 12/4.

There isn’t a structural reason to use material 5” thick and in most cases it’s hugely negative to the long term survival of the work.

Wide slabs need battening and battening is useless against really heavy slabs.

[lowell holmes]

I have taken boards to cabinet shops that had the equipment and paid them to flatten lumber for me.
Look around and see if there is one near you.

[James Pallas]

I'm a big believer in build what you want to build. If you want a 5" slab top do it. You should be prepared for what may happen in the future. Even with the best care panels may crack and those beautiful QS oak legs can and will split. I may just make the legs 3" longer so I can cut them off to level up at a later date or have an idea of how to handle crack down the road. If we followed all of the rules there would never be a Maloof rocker or many other great things. I want to see a 5" thick coffee table. I just don't know if I would like to deal with that lion in the house as I said previously.
Jim

[Mike Holbrook]

Bill, apparently we are the same age. I was also a software/data communications guy years ago. I think that many people over estimate the difficulty of working with larger pieces of wood. Schwarz and Myers just made a video. They make a roubo bench using 5” thick green lumber. They claim that it is not that hard to do. The point of the Mr. Chickadee videos to me is he frames buildings using green, large timbers. Apparently the joinery holds. Part of the “trick” may be using wooden pegs and joinery that allows the wood to move. Wedges, for instance can be driven in further or backed off as wood moves.....

It seems to me that a couple hundred years ago there was no kiln dried lumber but things still got built from wood. I think the techniques used to build things in that day and time have just been largely forgotten and or replaced by “modern” manufacturing techniques. My current interest in woodworking involves figuring out how to build with greener/wetter wood, so I may be a little weird. People who do this kind of work learn how to slow or speed up the way wood dries. I use a good deal of WATCO finish. Many people complain that WATCO does not prevent moisture loss, just slowing it down, which is why I like it. Most chair builders have a kiln for drying green wood. Wood items packed with damp wood chips in a plastic bag can be manipulated to control moisture content. Larger wood can be wrapped, painted, finished, stacked.....

[Patrick Chase]

Here's the Schwarz/Myers bench FWIW: https://blog.lostartpress.com/2017/01/20/roubo-workbench-by-hand-power/