Help with router planing tabletop

[shane behling]

hi folks! woodworking beginner here, working on my first bigger project. i’m working on flattening a tabletop that is too wide for a planer. i’ve got a sled and rail system set up for the router and its all level but the tabletop i’m planing has some twist. I put shims in at the twisted parts to the point where the board no longer rocked, but i’m still struggling to get a perfectly flat tabletop after planing with the router. is there anything I can do differently to get it flat? do I need to shim the board up higher?

[Patrick Varley]

hi folks! woodworking beginner here, working on my first bigger project. i’m working on flattening a tabletop that is too wide for a planer. i’ve got a sled and rail system set up for the router and its all level but the tabletop i’m planing has some twist. I put shims in at the twisted parts to the point where the board no longer rocked, but i’m still struggling to get a perfectly flat tabletop after planing with the router. is there anything I can do differently to get it flat? do I need to shim the board up higher?

In what way isn't it flat? If you have it shimmed so it doesn't move and you're taking material over the entire top it makes me think there's something off about the sled/rail setup.

[Mark Hennebury]

Photos help.

[Jim Becker]

Once you flatten one side with it shimmed...you have to flip it over and flatten that side with no shims to get the two faces coplanar. Your task is no different than if you were using a jointer to flatten a face and then a thicknesser to get the other side flat and coplanar with the first face...just the scale is larger.

[Thomas McCurnin]

A No. 7 Stanley with some winding sticks would do the trick on one of the sides