Hand planing long stock

[Marc Wittman]

Hi all-
I plan on doing some hand planing tomorrow morning. Only trouble is the stock I'm planing is over 6' long and about 6" wide. My bench is 5' long. Nope, I don't have a yellow lunchbox, yet. Obviously, I could clamp it to my bench, but I'll have some stock that's unsupported and I can't cut it down. My only plan right now is to try to clamp it in my vise and construct a make-shift board jack type setup, but I'm very concerned about this being unstable and just not working well.

Any thoughts/advice on how to face plane this size stock?

Thanks in advance.

[Steve Schoene]

Just plane one part at a time. You don't have to plane all the way from end to end for each stroke for face jointing or smoothing. Plane a bit over half and then shift the board to plane the other half.

[Jay Kilpatrick]

You may want to post this on Neanderthal Haven. When attempting things like this (for me its attempting!) I am forced to use the floor, a piece of plywood, and very creative clamping techniques which may make others laugh (the results may make others laugh too...they make me laugh...and Amy too if she is around ;)

~Jay

[Todd Burch]

Clamp an 8' board to your bench, (say, 2X8) and then put the 6'er on top of that.

Todd.