Best tool to square and straighten some 70mm posts

[Ttrees]

Clamp a plank to the bench to make a planing stop, if you haven't allerady.
Depending on the tolerance your after will dictate that time.
If your making a short bench like the Sellers one, and if your not using timbers that have been standing planed up for some time, it might not make sense to go over the top in regards to super precision.
You could get a meter long post surfaced on 4 sides within 0.5 mm in a few minutes.

Tom

 

[Trevanion]

The first woodworking machines were saws and planers which were designed to take the most physical aspects out of the job, so it's understandable why you would want to go down that path. If I had to hand plane everything I would go nuts :lol:

You could go out and buy a cheapie Titan, Erbauer or any other same cheap, made in the same Chinese factory but under a different brand planer thicknesser for about £250, there's nothing wrong with that if you don't plan on using it very often. They have their limitations though and can be a right pain to set correctly and some can't even be set correctly and you just have to live with that. But in my personal view if you were to begin using the machine for pretty much all of your material preparation I would suggest you get something with a little more clout for not much more cash. If you keep your eyes peeled on the eBay, Gumtree, Facebook, etc you can sometimes come across a bargain on an old machine such as a Sedgwick, Multico or even a Wadkin.

Remember, the sooner you cut out the hard work, the sooner you enjoy the other stuff

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Save yourself some grief, some money and a lot of hard work - buy some decent timber to start with.

 

[Nelsun]

Not sure I'd recommend a cheap P/T. Had the Titan one and the honeymoon period was short due to beds not being flat and the length of stock you could put through it safely was limiting. Sold that on and got a good lunchbox thicknesser. I went for the Makita one which isn't the cheapest bit then I didn't want another cheapo tool to frustrate me any further.

I made our coffee table out of about 10m of 90x90 oak. I did the whole lot with hand planes and loved every minute of it. Only took me about 30 seconds to dimension each 1m length too. I'm lying through my back teeth! Nackers to all that.

The thicknesser I mentioned earlier did all the hard graft as I enjoyed not sharpening my pane irons lord knows how many times very very much. I used sleds made from 18mm MDF (stiffened with 2x1 along the sides), hot glue and random wedges to get 2 opposing faces flat and parallel. After some careful faffing around I added brackets to the sleds to screw the wood at 90 degrees to the sled bed to get the remaining 2 sides done.

Could I have done all that with hand planes? Apparently so. Along with putting the "fun" back into "funeral".

The thicknesser still sees plenty use to this day. I'm not a pro by any means but it's paid for itself many times over in time saving and not sharpening plane irons

 

[jeztastic]

Save yourself some grief, some money and a lot of hard work - buy some decent timber to start with.

Yes, that would be logical. That's not how I want to do it though. The wood would be pricey and not great quality. I'd rather spend the money on a tool I could use again - or not at all.

I just belt sanded some of them down, actually I think it may have had the effect I'm after. It got rid of the surface dirt and splinters and revealed the grain and state of each blank. Now I can work out which to cut to size and where and move on to planing. I can also use a rougher grit to get rid of the worst lumps and bumps before I start planing.

I'll post some photos when I get a chance.

 

[Ttrees]

Belt sanding is slooooow, will leave embedded grit, and is not very accurate.
5 shavings will normally clean most planks I ever encounter.
You are clearly trying to plane into low spots and the plane won't cut.

Stop trying to level everything starting from around the low spot out, instead
Keep clipping the high spots off leading to each stroke making a longer shaving, if you have a reference you wont plane too much off.
You need a reference or you will chase your tail.
You must have picked up some bad habits from watching someone, I wonder who that could be? #-o

 

[Eric The Viking]

Sorry if someone has mentioned this before: how is your stock bent?

Bowed or cupped boards are fairly quick to sort out with a planer and thicknesser used in combination.

If it's "in wind" (rhymes with 'mind' rather than 'pinned'), it has a bit of a corkscrew look about it.

You can spot this by using "winding sticks", basically a couple of straight edges, each sitting on top at either end of the stock, at right angles to its length. They will exaggerate any twist so it's easy to see.

Using just a planer carefully at this point will get you to a flat surface, and another at right angles to the first. Then you can square it up completely by using the thicknesser.

Bear in mind that your 70mm stock probably won't be close to 70mm afterwards. One huge advantage of using machines in this context is that at least you can match everything up easily.

Also, if the wind or bend is bad, you can save some of the work and the stock by cutting the stock in half, to give two shorter pieces. OK, you will have to allow for those to be joined in the design, but the amount of material you have to remove to get squareness and flatness is halved.

Powered hand tools are a poor idea compared to a proper planer/thicknesser, as the hand tools don't have adequate reference surfaces, and so will follow a curve rather than remove it. The same goes for sanders.

Human-powered hand tools are better, but you will need to sharpen frequently.

E.

 

[jeztastic]

Belt sanding is slooooow, will leave embedded grit, and is not very accurate.
5 shavings will normally clean most planks I ever encounter.

I used a wire brush first to get rid of the grit and dust, but surely belt sanding is the only way to get rid of surface dirt without blunting tools? I sanded outside, I don't have dust extraction in my shed, and when planing the first few shavings on the dirtier wood produced dirty dust and a blunted iron.

You are clearly trying to plane into low spots and the plane won't cut.

Stop trying to level everything starting from around the low spot out, instead
Keep clipping the high spots off leading to each stroke making a longer shaving, if you have a reference you wont plane too much off.
You need a reference or you will chase your tail.
You must have picked up some bad habits from watching someone, I wonder who that could be? #-o

What gave you that idea? Where did I say that my plane wouldn't cut? And if you mean Paul Sellers, I've been taking his advice to start at the high spots. I don't know who else you could mean.

I dunno, this thread is a mix of people being really helpful and some others just jumping to conclusions and jumping on their hobby horse. (hammer)

Yes, most of the stock has twist in it. I'm using winding sticks, as advised by, again, Paul Sellers!

Anyway, here's my planing setup. And the sharp eyed amongst you may notice my most expensive and frequently used tool in the picture, it is also my least favourite. It may well go some way to explaining why time is such an issue for me.

 

[Ttrees]

Your bench is too short to have a reference, the work is unsupported and is bowing
your face sides need to be square if you intend to get a finished surface with the work clamped in a vice, and you cant easily check if your board has a twist even if your bench was long enough to use for reference.
You need to have something to butt up against the wall so your bench wont move.

Yes indeed take the plane to the wood straight away, maybe a light scrape with an old cut off bit of a hard point saw filed with a farmers own single cut file first, if its full of cement or whatever.
A good hovering over with the metal detector wand first though.

Tom

 

[M_Chavez]

Before I ride off into the sunset on my hobby horse :twisted: , may I just note that if you do go down the machinery route, you need to have a very good think about dust extraction. Running all that wood through a thickness planer may fill a room with way more dust than I'd be comfortable working in.

If you want to go down the hand tool route, I'd recommend doing everything you can to make the journey as enjoyable as possible.
Treat yourself to some good wood (your workbench will probably be the most used piece of equipment in your workshop). Get the tools that talk to you - it may be restoring old "scrap iron" with whatever you can find in your kitchen or investing a small fortune into designer brands - what matters is that the tools should be calling you to pick them up again and again. Working with hand tools is slow, learning to work with hand tools is even slower, but the fun is in spending time working the wood - both speed and quality of work will come afterwards. Best of all, find somebody nearby who can give you some pointers. Internet articles are great, but you really need a pro to show you how things are done.

 

[MikeJhn]

When I was at school many years ago, the woodworking teacher would clip me around the ear if I put a plane down on its cutting face.

 

[Just4Fun]

Unless I missed it nobody has commented on your timber (probably) being birch. I work with birch a lot using hand tools. I find it can be difficult to plane because the grain can change direction a lot. Are you getting a lot of tearout?
The only suggestions I can offer are a very sharp iron taking fine shavings and keep turning the wood end-for-end so you always plane with the grain. It may not be possible to plane the whole length of the wood in the same direction.

 

[Eric The Viking]

The "bench" will hinder you - the legs look like they come from a musical keyboard stand - way too springy for what you need.

Also a proper planer makes chippings rather than dust, in the main. I would worry about dust from a router, but not a planer, though it will make a lot of mess!

The biggest issue here is that you're doing things a piece at a time and not referencing to the other pieces. That way lies madness.

Get two parallel straight faces on each stavem, glue stuff together, then flatten the top and, if necessary the bottom faces of the slab you have made. You won't be close to the 70mm thickness you started with, but if you do it manually you'll have biceps* to match those of a gorilla.



E.

Probably triceps - I never bothered with biology at school.