face planing long boards

[catface]

Hello gents, any advice appreciated regarding the following -

I've been trying to plane & thickness some oak boards. The P/T is a scheppach 260ci & the boards are 8 feet long. I'm aware that the planer tables are warped & cannot be properly aligned anymore, so I've been putting stuff through the thicknesser on a sledge, suitably wedged, to flatten one side prior to turning the wood over for "normal thicknessing". This works ok upto 6 feet long, but 8 foot long oak plus a sledge (which you must also guarantee for flatness and lack of wind) is a PITA. Currently I'm getting acceptable results with 2 out of 3 boards, which is not an acceptable failure rate. NB the boards cannot be crosscut to shorter lengths, as the finished pieces need to be 90 inches long .

Short of just being very careful to select the flattest boards when buying the wood, how else can I put a flat face on a 8 inch by 50mm board 8 feet long ?

Ps. I have jointer hand plane & a makita powered hand plane (power plane), but can't find a reliable way to reliably and accurately mark out the lines to plane upto. Its easy to introduce twist (wind) when drawing straight lines 8 feet long !

What do others do to guarantee accuracy when face planing stock this long ?

regards, Catface

 

[MikeG.]

Time for some hand planing!

A thicknesser won't take wind out anyway.........it just makes one face parallel to another........but if your thicknesser is warped anyway it may be time to sell it!

Mike

 

[jlawrence]

Use a router on a jig to surface one face bafore putting it through the thicknesser.

 

[bjm]

Unless they are badly out it doesn't matter that the tables are not perfectly aligned. Your only reference that matters is the outfeed table relative to the cutter head. Planing 8 foot boards will always be a challenge but I have managed (with some difficulty, admittedly) to do so on a smaller PT than the one you have.

Can you cut the timber into thinner strips which you can glue back together using a flat reference?

Brian

 

[catface]

thanks for the replies.
I think the router across a couple of straight pieces either side of the plank would do most of it, then clean up with a hand plane to get the high spots off before thicknessing.

I'm new to the idea that the planer table (infeed) alignment won't really affecting the planer use (if outfeed and blades are aligned). i'll find some scrapwood & have another look at it.

CHeers all, Catface.

 

[OPJ]

Are the planer tables actually warped or just out of alignment from one another?

I used to work with one of the Scheppach machines and found that if you don't blow away all the dust and chippings from thicknessing before you drop the tables back down, they will put it all out of whack. From what I can remember as well, this machine wasn't particularly easy to 'adjust' if it wasn't set right in the factory... Come to think of it, that big fat manual wasn't actually a lot of help either! :shock: :wink:

Hand-planing seems to be the way to go; just knock of the high points with the longest plane you own until you can take long and continuous shavings.

 

[catface]

hello OPJ
I used a steel straightedge to test the table alignment. I can get the tables aligned with the straightedge across the infeed and outfeed at one end of the spindle or with the straightedge across both beds at the other end of the spindle, but not both together, so I do believe it is a warp not just adjusement error. Also, I did previously fit a pair of adjusting "jackscrews" to wind the infeed up/down during alignment, but still no better ! I'd say it was me but I've done similar alignment tasks on mills / lathes (metalworking) before ok, so I suspect it really is warp rather than user error. Never mind, as you say, back to my old friend the hand plane.
regards, Catface

 

[bjm]

I'm new to the idea that the planer table (infeed) alignment won't really affecting the planer use (if outfeed and blades are aligned). i'll find some scrapwood & have another look at it.

Think of it this way; if you had a (not too long) piece of timber with a slight bow and you start to plane the convex face - once you have started the cut and transfer the downward pressure onto the outfeed table you would see the other end wouldn't be in contact with the infeed table.

Brian