lvlacgyver

Hello, I need some help with my thickness planer that I've recently inherited. First off, I've got 6 walnut boards that I'm planning to make into a bookshelf. The boards are 7/8" thick and about 3' in length. They are cupped and twisted on both sides. Not terribly bad, but not great either. I tried to square the edges with my small table saw b/c I lack the use of a jointer. Anways, they turned out pretty bad. I need some help to get these boards are perfect as I can with the use of the tools I've got. Does anyone have any advice or step-by-step instructions they could help me with?

bigredc

You need a hand plane to get it close before you put it in the planer. Get about 3-4 identical sticks aprox 1"X1"X24". Lay them accross the boards, get down at one end of the board and sight along the sticks so you can tell where you need to plane to get it close.
After you get it planed you can get a good board with a strait edge and figure out a way to attach the uneven board to the strait board and run it through the table saw like that. Believe it or not I use double sided tape for a lot of stuff. If you get a good smooth, flat spot it will hold the boards to each other.

Marko

What do you want to know about the thickness planer

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lvlacgyver

If it's possible to plane a board with 2 poor sides to perfection.

Marko

I think that depends on how poor and in which form the boards are poor.I plane alot of cupped lumber.Comes outta the kiln this way and some of it is pretty severe.What I do is flip the board so the concave side is up(iused to do it the opposite way too til I found out I would gain in thickness by the time I was done)this will allow the planer blades to plane from the outside edges of the board in.Give it a couple passes like this then flip it over and plane the convex side for a few passes.By this time you'll have a better idea as to what your dealing with and how to proceed but you will inevitably have a flat portion of the board on the table now.Remember, do not try to straighten these boards in one pass.Make several passes.Sometimes it can yield a nother 1/16" or so by starting this way and flipping it over and over.Try this and let me know how you make out.Don't be afraid to post a pic

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rick4u2000

I have been in this situation before, and built a sled. Basic idea is the sled has screws in it that support the gaps in the stock so it sits firmly while you plane one offending side. Make light passes until you get a smooth surface, then flip over.

You can adjust the screw depth and placement to ensure that the stock does not move. The Pic shows the basic set up I used to plane a cupped board. I put the cup facing down, so the screws supported the sides ran it through the planer until it was even, then put the sled away and planed the other side as usually done.

The sled was built out of two layers of 3/4 MDF glued together, 4' long and 12" wide The sled base has to be straight for this to work, Im sure there are better ways to make this sled, maybe out of plywood would hold screws better.

I found that with out this sled the feed rollers compressed the stock flat and did not remove the cup

Im pretty sure I saw a similar idea in a woodworking magazine recently

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Suz

If you don't want to screw with the screws, you can hot glue some wedges in place between the sled and the lumber being planed to stop the board from rocking. Then you can flatten the one side then take it off the sled and plane the other side.
Another hint: Put a squiggly pencil line from side to side on your board. Then you can tell at a glance if the whole board is flat across or if there are still some high/low spots.

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Jim

firefighteremt153

Ive never done this but have heard that you could just rip the cupped board in half and send them through the planer. Then just glue them back up. This should reduce the amount of planing you would have to do and allow you to have thicker lumber. Just a thought, like I said I have never tried this, but a friend has and said it worked well for him.

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Boardman

Nah....whoever told you that was wrong. There's enough pressure on the lumber via the rollers that planing wiggly stuff will just result in 2 smooth and parallel wiggly sides, no matter how wide it is. Hand planing works, but it seems like too much work for me and I'm not very good anyhow. I've used ther sled set-up to do stuff as wide as 13".

bigredc

Take this with a grain of salt, I haven't been woodworking real long, but I have planed a lot of rough lumber. A planer won't help with a twisted board, but I've planed a lot of cupped boards and they came out fine. I had a 17" wide board that didn't fit through my 12" planer so I hand planed the whole board about 17"X 30". I guess it wasn't dry or something, but within a few days it was cupped a little. It was to close to finished size for me to hand plain it, so I ripped it into 3 equal boards ran them through individually then glued it back together. It cam out fine. That said, if you have enough wood to work with I think the sled is way to go.

bigredc

I have some cupped and twisted boards I figured I try to flatten them out. I wet some of them after I put them in the jig. They have been in the jigs for about 2 weeks now. I took the one out. It's flat for now. It was 2 slightly cupped boards I wanted to make a box top out of. I reversed the grain and glued them together, and put them in the jig. I'm not going to do anything with them till I give it a few days or a week. Have any of you ever tried this before?
Chris

Gerry KIERNAN

My brother brought me some alder boards that are two inches thick by ten inches wide, that we want to put through the plaver. However, they are also cupped, and some are twisted. I have taken the boards and placed them up off the floor on supports, stickered between them, and alternated the cups. I then placed pipe clamps every few feet along the boards, and have been cinching them up every few days. I also have a box fan blowing air over the stack. I am hoping that they will flatten out with time. I will restack after awhile for any remaining cupping.

Are your boards air dried, or kiln dried? If they still have some moisture content you could try clamping them up in the house. As they dry more thay should take a new set.

Time will tell.

Gerry

bigredc

Just in case you didn't know what I was talking about. I like using a hand plane. I'm definitely glad I have power tools, but some things I like to do the old way.
Chris

woodworks

Has anyone thought of maybe looking for someone who has a jointer???
I'm not being goofy here, but I just thought, hey, why not look in the yellow pages for a cabinet shop and at least see what they would charge to smooth one side. For no more then you have I think it would be the right way to go. The fastest and easiest at this point. Although you haven't said how wide they are.
Just my two cents worth. If that is over charging, then you can give me my change .

bigredc

That would be to easy. Half the fun is trying to figure out how overcome problems. I know I'm weird. I have to confess. I've only ever fixed twisted boards with a hand plane that didn't have a lot of twist. I worked on a piece of walnut for an hour. I hardly put a dent in the problem. I went with the sled. I had a perfect scrap piece of MDF. I had to lift one corner up 1/2" and the diagonal corner to that about 1/4". The whole process making the sled and planing it only took about 20 min. I have a perfectly flat board now. That sled worked great. I only needed 3 screws to prop up the corners and then I used 2 screws on each end to pinch the board in place.
Chris

woodworks

Well I don't know about the fun part, but I have to admitt that I do it all the hard way until I've gotten so frustrated that I'm ready to scrap the whole thing. Then for some reason I think of the right way to do it and then spend some good quality time kicking myself in the butt wondering why I didn't think of that at first.

Don't forget to show us what you made out of the walnut.