# Simple flattening aid



## xy mosian (15 Jun 2015)

I don't know if I have read about this somewhere, if it your idea my apologies.

Today I was flattening some Ash. From the shavings I could see the areas, of the piece, which were high. To mark these, for amount to remove, I rocked my plane to about 45 degrees and slid it backwards and forwards making a shallow groove on the high spots. When I had removed these, by planing, I checked again. This seemed to me to be a fast simple way to make sure I had removed enough before checking again.

xy


----------



## Jacob (15 Jun 2015)

Normal practice and very old hat with many variations. 
Any steel straightedge, edge of your plane or a combi square rule, will leave a mark on the high points. More so if you touch it up with a pencil. 
Or apply a straight edge and actually mark where it touches with a pencil, and so on. 
Apply the stock of a square to your flat face and where the blade touches the edge apply a pencil mark and it shows up twist etc.


----------



## Steve Maskery (15 Jun 2015)

That's the thing about Good Ideas, see. More than one person can come up with the same Good Idea and it's still a Good Idea that can be passed on to others so that they know about the Good Idea as well.

That's a Good Idea!


----------



## Jacob (16 Jun 2015)

Steve Maskery":2m01xuip said:


> That's the thing about Good Ideas, see. More than one person can come up with the same Good Idea and it's still a Good Idea that can be passed on to others so that they know about the Good Idea as well.
> 
> That's a Good Idea!


Yes thats it. 
It's quite pleasing to hit on a good idea. It's no less good if you find out later that everybody else knew about it already!


----------



## bugbear (16 Jun 2015)

xy mosian":3pgjqwzp said:


> ... I rocked my plane to about 45 degrees and slid it backwards and forwards making a shallow groove on the high spots. When I had removed these, by planing, I checked again.



Ah - so the mark had physical _depth_, which guided you in how _much_ to remove, as well as indicated _where_ to remove from.

Good idea, and not one I'd heard.

BugBear


----------



## Phil Pascoe (16 Jun 2015)

You can't really use it thus, can you though? You have no means of knowing its actual depth - it's only guesswork. You can't afford to leave the groove too deep or you'd have to take the whole board down to get it out.


----------



## Jacob (16 Jun 2015)

yes it's just a mark. You remove the marks and then make some more, until the marks go right across with no hollows.
But doing a series of cuts down to a level is another way of removing waste in a controlled way so that's not new either!


----------



## bugbear (16 Jun 2015)

phil.p":1kzts4hk said:


> You can't really use it thus, can you though? You have no means of knowing its actual depth - it's only guesswork. You can't afford to leave the groove too deep or you'd have to take the whole board down to get it out.



Once the plane is deep enough in the high spot that it's whole length touches the board, I suspect the pressure would reduce such that the groove would self limit.

I'm pleasantly surprised this technique works in a wood as hard as Ash though.

The technique is faintly reminiscent of working at different crossed angles when filing. On each angle you stop when the marks from the previous angle have - JUST - disappeared, which means you remove a roughly constant thickness on each iteration.

EDIT; an analogous (but obscure) technique from luthery has occurred to me; a "graduation punch" is used, which makes pin pricks to a known point within the board, (measured from the lower face). One planes away on the upper face until the holes - just - vanish. The thickness thus marked by the punch is altered with the position on the board, to allow the accurate planing of a contoured plate.

BugBear


----------



## xy mosian (16 Jun 2015)

OO! Discussion, great. 

My particular interest in this was simply that I did not need to change the tool in hand, to another straight edge for example. I found it quick and easy, and tended to make quite a few shallow grooves. 

In this case squareness to an edge was not important, just flattness for glueing.

As for the hardness of the Ash, I am using some air dried Ash at the moment and that is noticeably less hard than the kiln dried I have laying around.

xy


----------



## Sporky McGuffin (18 Jun 2015)

Steve Maskery":3i72v1vp said:


> That's the thing about Good Ideas, see. More than one person can come up with the same Good Idea and it's still a Good Idea that can be passed on to others so that they know about the Good Idea as well.



I have heard it referred to as "unventing".


----------



## custard (30 Jun 2015)

xy mosian":tx39kbul said:


> As for the hardness of the Ash, I am using some air dried Ash at the moment and that is noticeably less hard than the kiln dried I have laying around.
> 
> xy



The difference between two random pieces of ash from different sources is likely to be greater than the difference between a kiln dried piece and an air dried piece from the same tree which are both at similar levels of moisture content. Natural variations in timber are way greater than is generally realised. I've experienced this first hand, a full boulle of air dried timber planked into 1" and 2" boards, the workshop was suspicious that the 2" might not be sufficiently dry so had those boards kilned, it was all brought into the workshop and allowed to acclimatise and settle. Net result, none of the craftsmen (with multiple hundreds of years of collective experience), could tell the kilned wood apart from the air dried wood.

Furthermore, if I found a piece of air dried ash that was _especially_ easy to work, then I'd be concerned that it wasn't yet properly dry! Wet wood is easy to work, but it's dry wood that's needed for domestic furniture.


----------



## xy mosian (30 Jun 2015)

custard":38rtmg75 said:


> xy mosian":38rtmg75 said:
> 
> 
> > As for the hardness of the Ash, I am using some air dried Ash at the moment and that is noticeably less hard than the kiln dried I have laying around.
> ...




Thanks for the reminder custard. 
I guess the difference between the pieces in question were down to being different trees.
Fortunately no untoward movement yet.

xy


----------

