Skip Planing?

[Matt Ocel]

How do you "skip planing".

I have seen some reclaimed flooring "skip planed", can it be done on a lunch box?

[Joe Chritz]

Skip planing is a term that indicates just a light pass was taken and the entire material isn't cleaned up.

It is generally done so you can see the figure in the wood better than in the rough stage.

Any light pass would be considered skip planed.

Joe

[Richard M. Wolfe]

To me 'skip planed' is just lightly planed, or 'hit and miss'. It's done to see what the grain is like and to fairly closely dimension wood for better handling and stacking.

Since it's simply planing, any planer can do the job. I prefer to use either rough cut or skip planed lumber for a project and plane it right before it's to be used - better looking stuff.

[Chris Rosenberger]

2 of my lumber suppliers sell mainly red oak as hit & miss planed. They say it helps them in grading the lumber.

[Peter Quinn]

Ditto all of the above responses. I worked in a flooring mill and we never skip planed anything but I know the 'rustic' style your talking about. It gives recycled flooring or boards that vintage patina when they don't clean off all the saw mill marks and rough. I think some flooring companies specify a non standard thickness be cut at the mill, 7/8" for instance to finish at a skip planed 3/4" dimension. If you can work with a local saw mill you might be able to get material sawn to your desired thickness for a small to medium sized flooring job.

If you started with 4/4" it should mostly clean up by 3/4". You could skip plane one face until you achieve the desired result and take the rest off the other face but you risk some bowing if taking too much material off one face.

Or, you could run a 15/16" floor (standard finished dimension of the hit and miss lumber I see around my area) as long as molding and thresholds can accommodate this thickness.

I made a beautiful 4" X 48" mitered herringbone floor (2000SF) once and was being VERY careful with those crisp edges when a coworker showed me the designers sample board for the finished work. He was paying a group of "Antiquers" to pummel the floor with saws, scrapers, chains, nail covered sticks and such to give it that vintage look, then glazing the bruises. It had a pretty convincing 'old rustic' look, and I stopped being so careful with the boards I was making, figured I'd start the antique process early for them.