Throughout my series of posts on milling lumber by hand, I used several different hand planes. Each of the planes that I used was chosen for the specific tasks that they excel at. The jack plane is the perfect size …
I just finished up writing a series of posts about milling lumber with hand tools. In the past, I’ve done several videos that cover the process pretty well. They’re older videos, but still valuable for seeing the process. Here’s one of the better ones.
The over sized board is flat on one face and has two edges that are both straight, square to the first face, and parallel to each other. I now have to make a decision about the board’s second face.
To make the edge of a board straight, start with a hollow.
Making the edge of a board perfectly square to its face isn’t always necessary. When square edges are required, though, you had better know how to get there efficiently or you could be chasing your tail for a long time.
Processing rough sawn lumber starts by addressing the reference face.
All boards are warped to some degree. Usually, starting with the saw is more efficient than starting with the plane.
If you have a power jointer, and flatten board faces on it, you might think that knowing how to do this task by hand is useless, antiquated knowledge. However, there are several reasons why I recommend you learn this valuable skill.
A few posts ago I talked about dealing with a badly warped blade from a wooden bodied hand plane, and then addressing issues with the bed of a wooden plane. These posts might suggest that wooden bodied hand planes are not as reliable or as functional as their iron siblings and that they’re not worth the effort to bother trying to use. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
Wooden hand planes can be confusing to the new hand tool user because it isn’t very intuitive how to use them. In this video, I attempt to demystify the process.
On today’s show, I discuss making cabinet backs, my personal finish preferences, achieving full width shavings, natural finishing products, and taking a project from concept to final finish.
In this video, I discuss using a frame saw for resawing, and planing the end grain of thick hardwood pieces.