Favorite technique for cutting a long, wide rabbet with the grain?

[Matthew Springer]

TL;DR: How to cut wide, deep rabbet in hard maple without exhausting myself?

I have a bunch of rabbets to cut in some 7' long curly, rock maple boards. This is for an interior trim project and I need to fit them around some framing lumber in the archway into my den.

The boards are about 7/8" thick and I need to hog out most of the depth leaving about 1/4" of material left. They need to be about 1-3/8" wide. So a decent amount to remove.

I did the initial shoulder cut on the slider, but the board was twisted just enough (wind I cant do much about) that the TS technique seemed not that safe or accurate.

Normally the answer to this would be my veritas RH skew rabbet plane, but the grain was going so hard the other way it seemed to make me question if this was really the best idea. I did that enough to get down to a bit of a lip on the sidewall, then switched to using my LN 10 -1/4 left handed which seemed to work better but was much slower then I really wanted. I think adjusting the mouth wider would help. I was getting a lot of jamming in the mouth, so I think that may have been part of my problem.

Do I need to just pony up and buy a matching LH Skew Rabbet?

[lowell holmes]

How about starting the rabbet with a router and finishing with a plane.

Plus, you can do several rabbets on wide board and then rip the board to the width you want.

[Jim Matthews]

Resaw, mark to keep correct grain orientation, rip section to house the long rabbett into three strips (A/B/C).

Discard strip B and reglue to leave desired groove.

[Mike Cornwall]

Maybe a total bonehead idea but would it make sense to plough a narrow groove on the face and another on the edge, then finish with the rabbet plane? Sounds like a ton of work any way you look at it, but since you aren’t trying to hear about just doing it on the table saw maybe that’s a way?

[Prashun Patel]

Dumb question alert: If the only reason you were averse to using a power tool (table saw) is twist, then why not an edge router with a rabbet bit?

[Warren Mickley]

TL;DR: How to cut wide, deep rabbet in hard maple without exhausting myself?

I have a bunch of rabbets to cut in some 7' long curly, rock maple boards. This is for an interior trim project and I need to fit them around some framing lumber in the archway into my den.

The boards are about 7/8" thick and I need to hog out most of the depth leaving about 1/4" of material left. They need to be about 1-3/8" wide. So a decent amount to remove.

I did the initial shoulder cut on the slider, but the board was twisted just enough (wind I cant do much about) that the TS technique seemed not that safe or accurate.

Normally the answer to this would be my veritas RH skew rabbet plane, but the grain was going so hard the other way it seemed to make me question if this was really the best idea. I did that enough to get down to a bit of a lip on the sidewall, then switched to using my LN 10 -1/4 left handed which seemed to work better but was much slower then I really wanted. I think adjusting the mouth wider would help. I was getting a lot of jamming in the mouth, so I think that may have been part of my problem.

Do I need to just pony up and buy a matching LH Skew Rabbet?

I don't know what TL;DR means.

I would not buy a left handed skew rabbet.

I have done this kind of work many times by hand. Some think you want to use power tools. If you want to do this by hand I will give a method.

[Jim Koepke]

I don't know what TL;DR means.

Me neither.

jtk

[David Bassett]

I don't know what TL;DR means. ....

(Internet speak for "Too long. Didn't read." I.e. a summary of the text.)

[David Eisenhauer]

As Lowell said, I cut the tongues on my table breadboard ends by running a narrow dado along the desired shoulder line, split out the bulk of the waste on the tongue down to my final depth line with a chisel, then use a plane to smooth/final depth the remaining surface. Not that much work actually because the dado is narrow and the chisel takes out the bulk of the waste before turning it over to a little final smoothing with a handy plane.

[Matthew Springer]

Sorry about the use of internet jargon. It's what all us kids are using these days (I'm 45).

David,
I hadn't thought about using the plow plane to cut the shoulders. Kinda like a wide kerfing plane. I think that might work out well. I was nervous about spltting off the full depth because I was worried I was going to break the remaining bit of board out, but it hadn't occurred to me to score the outer board edge too.

I thought about busting out the router also, the main hesitation there was I have terrible DC for the handheld and I didn't feel like spraying micro dust maple everywhere. I got into hand tools initially to try to avoid routers. But maybe I should just pony up and do it that way.

[James Waldron]

With the shoulder of the rebate defined by a 1/4" plow to depth, careful work for a few passes and then the shoulder makes a good "fence' to register a bench plane to take down the rest. Easy-peasy. 'course it's hard rock maple, but otherwise, ....

[Pat Barry]

I would go with a hand held router and make several passes. I think because of the wind issue this is better than router table.

[steven c newman]

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Back when I made a screen door for the house, needed a rebate for the screen's frame to sit in...
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The rebate plane is in the background...along with the bottom corner of the screen door ( raised panels )
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Just set the set for however wide you want to go...this one will cut 1" wide.
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Uses an old skew chisel from a Harbor Freight lathe chisel. Cuts on the skew.

[Keith Mathewson]

I use the method described by Warren and David. It goes quickly and pretty much dust free.

[Joel David Katz]

Resaw the maple, rip one of the pieces to the proper width, and then glue them together to form the rabbit.

[James Waldron]

Resaw the maple, rip one of the pieces to the proper width, and then glue them together to form the rabbit.

Not the most efficient Neanderthal technique. Ripping hard maple with a hand saw is not for the faint of heart. But knock yourself out.

Oh, you meant to use a table saw? Cheat!!! :eek:

Unless you actually meant your hand cranked band saw??? If so, I retract my comment.

[Joel David Katz]

Not the most efficient Neanderthal technique. Ripping hard maple with a hand saw is not for the faint of heart. But knock yourself out.

Oh, you meant to use a table saw? Cheat!!! :eek:

Unless you actually meant your hand cranked band saw??? If so, I retract my comment.

Didn't the OP say "This is for an interior trim project and I need to fit them around some framing lumber in the archway into my den." I strongly suspect this "framing lumber in the archway of my den" wasn't milled using hand tools. As such, my technique is an easy way to accomplish his goal regardless of the tools he chooses to resaw and and rip his seven foot boards.

[steven c newman]

And...you lose the thickness of the saw's kerf
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My usual way..or.
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2 cuts on the tables saw...
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Sometimes, I get a bit fancy...
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When I need to make a few rails....for frame and panel sides...

[Matthew Springer]

Thanks for your help everyone. So after doing the first one all with the 10-1/4, I decided to try a variant of the technique Warren and Dave alluded to one the next two. Worked out much much faster.

The gist is:
- Score the final rebate depth and width shoulders with your marking gauges.
- Take your plow plane with an iron slightly wider than the side of the mouth of a bench plane. (for cleanup)
- Run a groove down the long face of the board just outside your score mark using your plow all the way to final depth.
- Take you narrowest plow plane iron and run it down the jointed edge of the board just inside you score line. It need not be full depth (which is the final rabbet width) but if it is, good for you, you're done.

You should now have a defined outer shoulder and an inner shoulder at depth. You have a couple choices at this point:
- You can waste out the rest of the rabbet using a bench plane set super coarse. The groove you cut in the face will act as your depth stop since you chose a plow plane iron wider than the side mouth. I keep my number 6 with no camber at all on the iron so I did one this way (Full disclosure, that board was flat enough, I used the slider to help hog out some of the waste).

- Your other choice is to take your biggest, coarsest rip saw and cut in the side of the board to cut out the rabbet all in one shot. I did one this way and it was faster. The main thing is you will get a lot of sawdust clogging the teeth since there's nowhere for the sawdust to go in the blind kerf.

Either way, clean up with a rabbet plane at the very end. It was way faster sawing stuff out, but I still needed to cleanup a lot with the planes. But it was 10-15 mins vs 30 mins.


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[Nicholas Lawrence]

Looks good. Nice work.

[Jim Koepke]

Looks good. Nice work.

Ditto

jtk