Hand Plane Process

[Luis Reyes]

Hi All,

I'm loving the #5 hand plane I picked up on facebook marketplace and have been trying to practice flattening a 2x10 from home depot. I've watched a few videos on youtube but I'm still confused by what to do after I remove the high spots. I've shined a light and used a straight piece of wood and still see small slivers of light in certain spots so I know I'm not flat but I'm not sure what to do next. Do I now take shavings from the length of the board (~3 feet long) starting from the middle and working my way out?

I saw one technique where someone used a #4 on the width of the board vs the length. I saw another one where they talked about planing length wise but start in the middle until no shavings come out of your plane and then start planing towards the outside. I've probably confused myself watching so many videos so hoping someone can help simplify for me please!

Thanks in advance!

Luis

[Jim Koepke]

what to do after I remove the high spots. I've shined a light and used a straight piece of wood and still see small slivers of light in certain spots so I know I'm not flat but I'm not sure what to do next. Do I now take shavings from the length of the board (~3 feet long) starting from the middle and working my way out?

I saw one technique where someone used a #4 on the width of the board vs the length.

Your next step depends on how the low spots are oriented and what you have on hand.

Are the low areas seen when the straight piece of wood is across the piece or aligned to the length of the piece?

Do you have a longer plane than the #5?

The low areas have areas around them that need to be brought down. One has to be careful to not take them down more than necessary.

Taking light cuts across the work piece is often effective at this. Again only take off as much as needed.

Are your blades cambered? Too much camber will make it so there will always be light seen under a straight piece.

jtk

[Scott Clausen]

I am sure it can be done, ask Paul Sellers he can flatten the planet with a No. 4. I use a No. 5 for small or rough work but if dealing with anything more than 3X the length of the plane I grab the No. 7. The extra length seems to do better at evening out the highs and lows. My bench top I did with a No. 5 because that is what I had at the time and I got it damn flat. I did passes at a 45 deg angle across the width before going length wise. Now I have 32 planes but I only reach for a few fav's. Get a good edge on that iron and keep working the surface and learning. I took 10 five gallons buckets of shavings out of my shop today, practices make perfect.

[Jack Dover]

Ok, so your task here is truing and squaring a board before joinery.

Assuming you have removed high spots on one of the faces, your next steps should be something like this:

1. Mark the flattened face with a "face mark" - a half of a cursive "f". This is your reference face now.
2. Find the best edge. Square it to the face and mark with the edge mark - a "V" symbol pointing the the reference face. This is your reference edge.
3. Gauge the board to a desired width from the reference edge on both faces. True up the opposite edge to the gauge line. Note that the line will be parallel to the reference edge, but not necessary to the second edge. Make sure you do not go below the gauge line.
4. Gauge the board to the desired thickness, allowing a tiny bit for smoothing, 1/32" at most. Using a coarse set or a scrub plane to bring it down close (~ under 1/16") to the gauged line. Then set the iron fine, adjust a chip breaker as fine as you can and true the board to the line.
5. Cross cut to length, shoot the ends square if required.

All this can (and probably should) be done with #5. My rule of thumb is either using a plane about half the board length, or the longest plane when a board is very long.

Since you're practicing, check yourself by squaring a line with the pencil across the board. If you made it a perfect cuboid, the lines will connect perfectly. If they didn't match, even for a thickness of a pencil line - your edges are not parallel.

This is not a hard task, you might not succeed on a first attempt, but it's okay, fourth or fifth will be successful, just define a method of work and stick to it. Then, once you can true and square a piece predictably you can try flattening (2x might be not the best material though, but it depends).

[steven c newman]

One tip about flattening with the Jack. Go at a 45 degree angle to the grain, go from one end down to the other....then turn you and the plane around, and head back up to where you started from....always with the knob of the plane going away from you.

Then go with the grain, with the iron backed off a hair. Full length of the board with each pass...when you start to get a full shaving, you are done.

The Woodwright's Shop, Hand Plane Essentials, with C. Schwarz as a guest. Best 1/2 hour of working a plane as you'll find.....pbs.org.

[Luis Reyes]

what to do after

Your next step depends on how the low spots are oriented and what you have on hand.

Are the low areas seen when the straight piece of wood is across the piece or aligned to the length of the piece?

Do you have a longer plane than the #5?

The low areas have areas around them that need to be brought down. One has to be careful to not take them down more than necessary.

Taking light cuts across the work piece is often effective at this. Again only take off as much as needed.

Are your blades cambered? Too much camber will make it so there will always be light seen under a straight piece.

jtk

I have a wooden body plane that's about 24 inches long that I figure I should start practicing on. The length of the wood is 37 inches so was hoping to use only the #5 and #4 since they'd be easier to adjust. I had to look up what a cambered blade is, I'll have to check if the previous owner of the planes had it cambered but I hadn't noticed.

. I did passes at a 45 deg angle across the width before going length wise.

One tip about flattening with the Jack. Go at a 45 degree angle to the grain, go from one end down to the other....then turn you and the plane around, and head back up to where you started from....always with the knob of the plane going away from you.

Then go with the grain, with the iron backed off a hair. Full length of the board with each pass...when you start to get a full shaving, you are done.

When I have the plane at a 45 degree angle are you pushing it diagonally across the length or pushing it straight along the length (and the 45 degree angle is simply ensuring the sole of the plan is flat with the width of the board?

[steven c newman]

You are going across the grain at a 45 degree angle to the grain....pushing the plane straight ahead.

[Luke Dupont]

Watch Paul Seller's video on making stock square and flat. Or the Woodwright's shop video Steven mentioned.

A lot of people come up with some process and say you should use this plane then that, or start across the grain or in the middle of the board or whatever.

I usually use a single plane, or at most two planes, a No 5. 1/4 and a No. 3

A No. 5 will easily be able to flatten any piece you want. You just need to check a little more often with a long straight edge to make sure you haven't planed a hollow -- which you should do anyway. I never completely trust the plane to make a perfectly flat surface or edge, because you can actually make mistakes still even with a massive jointer.

I don't have a set process. I look at the board and use a straight edge, and winding sticks, and they tell me what I need to do.

If there's twist, I start by taking out the twist, planing from one corner to the other.

If there's a lot of cupping, I then plane across the grain or across at 45 degrees, with the protruding side (the middle) up. Once that is flat, it makes a stable surface and I can plane down the high edges. Sometimes though, it's easier not to go across the grain, but to go lengthways with the grain when doing this. Depends on the board and the width of the plane, and also on the grain.

I don't always do this entire process. Sometimes there's no twisting. Sometimes there's so little twisting and so little cupping that I just go straight to the smoother, especially on smaller pieces, and plane only with the grain. Your straight edge and winding sticks will tell you what to do. There is no process, there are only solutions to whatever needs to be done, and doing what doesn't need to be done is a waste of time.

[Jim Koepke]

Luis, there are many old posts on the work of flattening a surface.

Here is one of mine > https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?272588

There are different aspects of planing across a board. Scrubbing is done with a well cambered blade. Its main purpose is to remove material for dimensioning, saw marks and removing major high spots and twist. This can be followed by a less cambered blade. This will begin with mostly broken shavings until the surface starts to become even. When the shavings come out continuous across the full width move over. Keep doing this to the end of the piece.

Alternately some will take one shaving and move over, repeating to the end and then start back until smooth continuous shavings are produced over the full length. Then it is time to use a long plane with a light shaving to produce a continuous shaving over the length. Then finish with a smoother.

jtk

[Tom Trees]

Hello
Without knowing how you're approaching this, hard to suggest what the biggest issue is,as it sounds like some bad habits has been picked up,
i.e...

Planing work in the vice, with the timber deflecting like a leaf spring.
Planing in between dogs, or with doe's foot/birds mouth, with the timber trapped and deflecting again.
Not heeding David Charlesworth's suggestions of "stopped shavings" and proper use of straight edges.
Not having a good long reach angle poise with 7.5 or 8" shade.
Not having a straight edge as long as the work, combined with ignoring Charlesworth's teachings, , makes a sure way to nose dive off the ends.

Depending on how accurate you wish, I'm gonna guess you want accurate results, like for laminating those timbers for instance.


I suggest you watch the start of this video, but omit the scrub plane as that's for ship builders work,
which in turn omits the cross grain planing and blowing out the back, or just as bad... bevelling the back edge!
Start from corner to corner instead with your no. 5, as Rob eventually decides to do that, after the Lie Nielsen scrub plane promo
Note a cleat would be better than that single dog for wider stuff, no need to hold the work atall when dimensioning timber,
unless you've just split and chopped the timber like Follansbee, but you won't see that sorta stock in home depo.

Just a flat bench. or whatever surface that's flatten-able, which isn't spoiled with saw and chisel cuts, i'e a long enough sleeper on sawhorses, one end butted against something,
whatever your bench is, no vise in the way if it's short, hopefully.

If you don't have a long enough straight edge, then you could make a pair of timber ones, matched and parallel so you can swap them round, can get very accurate doing this,
and two incase they might warp, easy to flip and check.

What you can take away from this video is..
Flat bench, which is trustworthy!!!!!!!!
Flipping the work waaaay more often shown by other folks, and even on a large bit of timber at that.

Two planes for home depo timber or anything that doesn't need an inch taken off, jack and smoother if ya need (likely with knots)
https://youtu.be/GGuGFGAQTxE?t=427

And watch anything from David Charlesworth you can find on the matter of accurate honest planing.

That should help a bit as there's some terrible advice out there been given, painful to watch some folks.

Tom

[Scott Clausen]

I have a wooden body plane that's about 24 inches long that I figure I should start practicing on. The length of the wood is 37 inches so was hoping to use only the #5 and #4 since they'd be easier to adjust. I had to look up what a cambered blade is, I'll have to check if the previous owner of the planes had it cambered but I hadn't noticed.





When I have the plane at a 45 degree angle are you pushing it diagonally across the length or pushing it straight along the length (and the 45 degree angle is simply ensuring the sole of the plan is flat with the width of the board?

In the case on my benchtop the laminated SYP was not smooth with many 1/8" dips as the boards moved during clamping. I didn't look up any technique but in my mind starting at one corner and traversing the top at a 45 degree angle and repeating on the way back at an opposing angle would work. As stated above required items are a flat bench, good straight edge, winding sticks and marking gauge. Start the stroke pushing down on the horn and finish pushing forward with the handle. There are many little things that go into getting work flat and true. I still find myself at times focusing attention on the wrong things and losing control of a dimension. If you watch Paul Sellers it is amazing how many calculations his mind is making when he picks up a board and looks at it.

[Robert Engel]

“Flat” is a relative term. What you’re looking for is flat and planar.

Flattening starts with sighting the board and removing material so it sits flat on the bench. You don’t worry if it’s perfectly flat, just contacting 4 points. Usually cupped side down.

On the top side, start by using a straight edge to see where the high spots are, scribble with pencil & get them reasonably flat. On a gnarly or rough board most people start with a scrub plane.

You’re probably not dealing with a very bad board, so start with 45° across the grain both directions until you get full shavings.

Then use winding sticks to make the board planar. Once the board is flat and planar, go with the grain to remove plane tracks.

Mark lines parallel to surface around the edges, flip over and got to work.

Cosman has a decent approach in this check his videos.

[Tom M King]

It doesn't matter which plane, or which process one uses. The job is to take down the high parts only. It's sort of like using a powered jointer. I never understood why some people think that running a whole crooked board over a jointer is going to straighten it.

[steven c newman]

To add yet another confusing to a newbie idea.....go and watch the Furniture Maker, Ishitani flatten a tabletop.....his "straight edge" is a High Tech, STRAIGHT 2 x 4, laid on edge

Then watch the rest of a video of his..to see how he flattens a high spot....

Some on here tend to make the process almost into a Rocket Science....when it is not.

BTW: IF the surface you lay that board on is not flat......

[lowell holmes]

Why not spend a day or two practicing?