martin.a.ball":14rggkk0 said:
I'd be interested in how folks go about preparing this amount of stock without one, in particular how close to the final dimensions would you cut and rip to allow finishing with a hand plane?
It's a good question.
I think there are really two answers. The first is in line with Chris's comments, hand thicknessing timber is really hard graft that quickly drains the romance from hobby woodworking. The internet is full of armchair warriors who have little practical experience but say that armed with a scrub plane you can briskly polish off dimensioning in short order. That's just nonsense. I trained in a workshop that didn't get electricity until the 60's, and for the best part of a year when training we could only use hand tools. I've built substantial pieces of hardwood furniture entirely by hand, and I've spoken to old boys who worked in the manual era; there's no dodging the fact that it's bloody tough going. However, you can do things to make it less gruelling. Work in clear pine or softer hardwoods like Cherry, choose modest projects no larger than your side table, select your timber with care and in person. Perhaps most importantly, learn from antique furniture and think how to utilise timbers of different thicknesses. For example, your side table could have the two side aprons and the back apron all in different thicknesses. Or if the plan called for 18mm thick timber for these components you could actually use 24mm. If you chamfer the underside of a top it doesn't really matter if it's 3/4" thick or 1" thick, you'll only see a uniform 1/2" band all the way around, so you could have two side tables with different thickness tops that would still look identical. Only accurately surface one face and one edge (paradoxically you usually choose the inside face and edge for this) then use these as your reference surfaces for cutting joints.
The second answer specifically addresses your question. I might be misreading you here but I get the impression you're thinking of thicknessing with a bandsaw. Bandsaw thicknessing is fraught with risk. Unless you're taking say a 34mm thick board down to an 18mm board (in which case you should take two thin cuts off each face, rather than one thick cut from a single face) you're usually better off using a hand plane. As a very approximate rule of thumb for moderate scale boards, you should allow at least 3 or 4mm from a rough sawn board to get down to your final thickness.
Finally, I realise and appreciate what an insurmountable roadblock thicknessing timber is for many hobbyist woodworkers. I suspect it's one of the main reasons so many people arrive on this forum full of enthusiasm, but then disappear within a year or two. And that's a shame. If anyone is in that position and lives in West Sussex, South Hampshire, or East Dorset then PM me. For the occasional moderate size project I'll be happy to machine your components to get you up and running.
Surfacing a board like this,
Then thicknessing it like this,
Takes easy seconds rather than exhausting hours.
Which then leaves you to do the clever work at your bench, like this,
In order to produce something like this,
If that were the reality of woodworking for more hobbyists I suspect the craft would be far more popular than it actually is.
