planing largish flat panels

[engineer one]

so some time ago i bought a nice piece of lime, about 270 x400x40mm
colin c kindly bandsawed it in half, and so finally, the last couple of days i have attempted it to flatten it.

over the last couple of weeks since i finished the top part of the new bench, and have got a nice stable surface, so i have flattened some concave and convex pieces of oak, and eventually got where i wanted, but they were only 40x40 or so.

then i have flattened pairs of oak to join for a panel. usual way, mark one face, then as it were book match each pair, and then plane the edge. got nice joins. now to glue it all up :?

so i am pretty proud of my hand planing skills now. not perfect but i am getting there. more practice than in a long long time, and the blades are staying relatively sharp.

so i have got rid of all the bandsawn marks on the large piece of lime,but am now left with a piece that is not flat all the way across. but the surface is nice and smooth :?

i kind of understand marking a line on the edge, but how do you get it right in the middle with a piece this large, and i also know that for most of you this may be a tiny piece :roll:

so far i have been using my LN LA 164 and wonder do i need to go to a 41/2 or what?

paul :wink:

 

[JesseM]

I'm no expert at this, but what I would do is this. Pick a side and get rid of any wobble and rocking in it. You can do this by rubbing that side of the board on the bench. The high spots will show up as shiny spots. Progressively take those down.

Once you have 1 flat side take a marking gauge and mark your depth referencing the flat side. To conserve the maximum thickness use the lowest spot as your reference and then mark the rest of the board all the way around.

Now plane to that mark. Do the same as before with the burnishing of the high spots to get rid of any rocking and so forth. Finish off with some winding sticks to get rid of twist.

This would be the approach I would take, however keep in mind that I am learning as well and may have missed something. I realize I have left out the sides, but am assuming the board is mostly flat already and just needs some cleaning up. :lol:

 

[engineer one]

thanks jesse, that's kind of what i did, BUT.

actually the bandsawn marks were pretty visible, so the first thing was to try and get rid of those marks.

doing that takes time and effort setting my 164 to not take too much off, and slowly removing the hills.

however, you get to a point where most of these spots have gone, and fortunately you can see and feel a nice smooth surface, so then i measure.
what i am finding a little difficult to figure is how you plane only part of the board without leaving a hard line.

being a piece of lime there is some contra grain, and tear out, but what i am finding difficult is stopping in the middle and not leaving the line which is a bit sticking up. :?

paul :wink:

 

[mr]

I think it's a case of a very sharp blade, a very light cut and lots of practice to lift out of the cut at the end of the sweep. Imagine an (aero)plane taking off. I find it easier with a larger plane, the 7 1/2 for eg, though heavier, is easier to left to smoothly out of a cut than my 4 1/2 though the 4 1/2 is not as fettled as the 7 1/2 which might not help.

Cheers Mike

 

[engineer one]

cheers mike, i knew it would mean more practice

i think i must also spend some more time with DC's famous curved blade to help with that action. haven't tried with my LV No6 so will have a go.

actually what this has taught me is with a wideish plank it is very difficult to see that the grain goes the same way all the time. so just when you think you have solved a problem, you get tear out

fortunately this side will be inside the item i want to build, so the practice is useful for later, and with maybe different woods.

silly question is lime hard or soft wood???

paul :wink:

 

[mr]

I don't think a camber on your blade will help with the lines your talking about which are perpendicular to the direction of plane travel, the cambered blade will help eliminate tracks running parallel with the with the direction of travel caused by the corners of the blade. Having said that my blades aren't cambered and I don't have problems with track marks.
Re the tearout, I have suffered a lot with tearout, it gets better with practice. But the key things I've found in eliminating it are sharp blade, light cut, test cut to make sure you're planing the right direction, mark the right direction on the board so you know which way to go if you have to stop in the middle and come back later. Then for when all that fails I've just bought a no80 cabinet scraper. It's the dog's dangly bits.
And Lime is a hardwood

Cheers Mike

 

[JesseM]

thanks jesse, that's kind of what i did,
what i am finding a little difficult to figure is how you plane only part of the board without leaving a hard line.

being a piece of lime there is some contra grain, and tear out, but what i am finding difficult is stopping in the middle and not leaving the line which is a bit sticking up. :?
paul :wink:

MarcW made a post about flattening and gives a pretty thorough explanation. About the tearout, if you are using the LA jack then at some point I'd buy an extra blade and put 50 bevel on it. I have extra and can attest to the fact that it does not tear out in just about anything.

 

[Anonymous]

You could do with a jointer (#7 or 8) or a possibly a Fore (#6) to get it nice and flat

 

[engineer one]

i'll try my no 6 lv, but thought the 164 was the way to go! :roll:

paul :wink:

 

[mr]

but thought the 164 was the way to go! :roll:

paul :wink:

But why?
I don't know the 164 but isn't it a low angle smoother? If so it will just follow the bumps making them nice smooth bumps won't it? You really need the bigger No6 or bigger to flatten the board. It also sounds as though you're trying to "precision" plane a bump out of the middle of the plank. You may be better off flattening the whole thing ie not concentrating on the bump but flattening the whole board (diagonal to the grain) with the long plane until you get to a point where the bumps are gone and you can move on to the 164 to get a finished surface.

Cheers Mike

 

[engineer one]

to be perfectly honest mike i was learning what might be best for the circumstances.

and also since i haven't finished the workbench underneath, the No6 was lowest in the pile, so i was also being lazy :lol: :twisted:

so back to the no 6 and will report later

paul :wink:

 

[Hokie]

I start off with a No. 7 taking a 6-thou cut (pretty thick). Once you get the high spots off like someone else said (by burnishing the surface) I begin starting and stopping (the airplane method). The effect is a 2-3 thou hollow in the middle of the board. CAREFUL... when putting a combination square on the board, put the long rule side across the hollow face (wide face) or you will drive yourself mad getting both sides square with the face. Get used to putting long straight edges on your piece and moving only the ends (like DC) to see where it is high an low. Take star.stop shaving in the high areas that show up as burnished area (unless they are around the edges) If a rule moves only on the ends, but moves in the middle when 2-3 thou feeler is place under the middle of the rule, call it good and grab the marking gauge and work on the other side. (Or, better yet, I put flat face down and run through thicknesser)

Get the board flat, then worry about taking the bandsaw marks off. A small smoother can do that. Do a few stop shaving when done to make sure it stayed flat.

A straight blade will work, but be very conscious that your stroke overlap only slightly.

 

[engineer one]

couple of apologies for mistaking the plane i used initially, actually it was my LN62, not the 164. :roll:
but today after reading everything, i got the LV6 out and that made life much easier, but for one thing, i got some score marks.

moved everything about, got rid of the shavings etc, but still they did not go. so i wonder could there actually be a problem with the LV frog design which allows small bits to get trapped in the corners if you move it forward??? anyone got any ideas?? :?

so now after about 4 hours work over 4 days i have two panels which are a lot better than i thought i could do, with basically flat surfaces, and decent finish. still getting a little tear out, but much less than before so
now to the other parts of the table :roll:

thanks to you all for the help
paul :wink:

 

[engineer one]

final thought, any one used the trend dry lubricant prfe spray
on the bottom of their planes and if so does it work??

just found some in my cupboard, and since it is not silicon based
i wondered what it's value is??

paul :wink:

 

[mr]

It appears to be designed to prevent buildup of resins probably most useful on a table saw blade (or other machine based cutter). Can't see that it would have much use on a plane as straight lubrication (candlewax style) except praps if you were dealing with nasty sticky pine.

Cheers Mike

 

[engineer one]

cheers mike, thought i'd ask.

found part of the problem with my no 6 lv, somehow i had dinged it at the rear, and there was a little nick, so had to file that off, and make a bevelled edge.

now the faces of four oak legs have been cut to almost size, and then the face has been planed, next step the other 3 sidesx 4 :roll:

paul :wink:

 

[mr]

Ouch, I did that with my Low angle jack - painful experience but a learning one.
Having just planed some legs for a cabinet. The thing to watch out for is that you don't end up chasing yourself round the faces. Get the one side flat and then an edge and 90 degrees to the first, I found that marking both edge sides of the face to be planed (if you see what I mean) with the distance from the good face was a help. After all if the mark on two opposing edges is the same distance from the face face down on the bench then the face face up should be flat and parallel to the face face down. Of course that only works if the edges are at 90 degrees to the face. Good Luck.

Cheers Mike

 

[Wanlock Dod]

Engineer One,

Having just made a small stool out of some lime I would just add that despite it being a hard wood, it is rather a soft one (kind of the opposite of yew :?: ). I found it to be just like a really nice bit of pine with no knots in it, easy to work, if a little characterless.

Cheers,

Dod

 

[engineer one]

dod thanks i found it a somewhat easy wood to work too, but mine is nicely figured in one corner. kind of like a burr maple or something
which is why i chose it and will use if for a couple of end panels on this project.

paul :wink: