Cheating on My Planes - or - The Hand Tool Guy's Dilemma

[Kuffy]

a small used 6" jointer alongside your current 12" benchtop thicknesser will probably be sufficient instead of creating 240/110volt hassles plus the shipping plus paying the Australia tax on machinery/anything. if you do need to thickness a wider than 6" board, you could quickly straighten the board with a jack plane and then just edge joint and thickness afterwards. ideally in a perfect world you would have a bandsaw that can resaw 12" boards, a jointer which can surface plane 12" wide and a 24" thicknesser. that way you can prepare ~600mm bookmatched panels pretty decently only needing final smoothing via planes or abrasives. works out well too for chopping boards which are often more than 300mm wide. the next step would be a 1200mm wide belt sander for preparing dining table sized glueups

I have the JPT310-HH, if i had 3 phase power and ample space within the shop, i would have bought a 12inch buzzer and a 24" thicknesser, both being big ole cast iron dinosaurs. the jet combo machine is just a machine serving a purpose atm until I can buy the last machines i will need for the rest of my life.

[D.W.]

In your shop, you do it how you like to do it. If you like to use all power tools and finish with an ROS and use designs that never need a hand tool, then that's how you do it.

If you want to work in a shop that doesn't even have electricity, then that's how you do it.

I'm headed in the opposite direction, but it's by choice. And by choice is the best part about it, whatever way you do it.

[planemaker]

http://www.forums.woodnet.net/ubbthr...lapsed&sb=5&o=

[rmihai]

No machines in my shop. I use air dried wood, that I treat well before working with it (I acclimatize wood for years...) I just finished recently 2 projects working with hickory and black locust. No problems whatsover. It was really a pleadure. As for thicknessing - a scrub plane is a no brainer. Quicker and quiter than any machine I know.

[FenceFurniture]

Quicker than any machine I know.

Eh? How's that?

[Luke Maddux]

I'm with Fence, here. Quieter I will buy, but quicker? You're gonna have to explain that one...

[rmihai]

How much time do you need to setup the planer? How much to clean it? How much to reolace the blades and how much to lubricate its parts?

[FenceFurniture]

How much time do you need to setup the planer? How much to clean it? How much to reolace the blades and how much to lubricate its parts?

Funny you should mention that as I just did a lube last night - 5 minutes - maybe there are other parts that need lube, but I don't know.

Time to set it up? From purchase? An hour or two. For each use? Ummmm, a few seconds to half a minute (like converting from jointing to thicknessing).

Cleaning it? A quick brush down, or a blow with CA. Every now and then I'll give it a vac down if it's not going to be used for a while.

Replacing the blades? Well I've probably put through about 4 cube since I've had it (18 months) and I've neither changed a blade nor rotated them yet (4 edges per cutter, 63? cutters, ~$4 each). That means the blade cost so far is nil, and with apparently 3x the life left yet before I have to replace a single blade - even with the recent torture they've been given.

Maybe there's something I'm missing here, but there is no way I could have jointed and thicknessed the amount of timber I have in the last 5-6 days in the same time with a plane - even if I was Arnie, and with the best planing techniques (and those two would appear to be mutually exclusive ).

Maybe you're not familiar with Eucalypts, and the challenges they present?

[Luke Maddux]

Yeah, still gotta agree. Planes require a fair bit of upkeep as well. Yes, I know that the scrub probably requires the least of any plane out there, but there is absolutely no way you're going to have a net savings of time over a lifetime of thicknessing by hand as opposed to by machine. I think it's safe to say it would take orders of magnitude longer.

[rmihai]

Indeed - i am not familiar with Eucalypthus. But I just bring to thickness the other day a rough 10" x 8 ft hard sugar maple in about 10 min. Are you familiar with the difficulties of planning sugar maple?

Funny you should mention that as I just did a lube last night - 5 minutes - maybe there are other parts that need lube, but I don't know.

Time to set it up? From purchase? An hour or two. For each use? Ummmm, a few seconds to half a minute (like converting from jointing to thicknessing).

Cleaning it? A quick brush down, or a blow with CA. Every now and then I'll give it a vac down if it's not going to be used for a while.

Replacing the blades? Well I've probably put through about 4 cube since I've had it (18 months) and I've neither changed a blade nor rotated them yet (4 edges per cutter, 63? cutters, ~$4 each). That means the blade cost so far is nil, and with apparently 3x the life left yet before I have to replace a single blade - even with the recent torture they've been given.

Maybe there's something I'm missing here, but there is no way I could have jointed and thicknessed the amount of timber I have in the last 5-6 days in the same time with a plane - even if I was Arnie, and with the best planing techniques (and those two would appear to be mutually exclusive ).

Maybe you're not familiar with Eucalypts, and the challenges they present?

[FenceFurniture]

Indeed - i am not familiar with Eucalypthus. But I just bring to thickness the other day a rough 10" x 8 ft hard sugar maple in about 10 min. Are you familiar with the difficulties of planning sugar maple?

Well that is a damn fine effort, and no I'm not at all familiar with SM. However, each pass of an 8' board through the thicky would take about 30 seconds. If it was (say) 10mm out of thickness whack that would be three passes, and say two minutes. Finished ready to go to 150 grit sanding or smoothing plane (name your poison).

Respect for the way you choose to do things, but I think it's a pipe dream to say that thicknessing by hand plane is quicker than a machine.

Moreover, if what you say is true (that no machine you know of is quicker) then how come the 756,941¼ professional woodworking shops worldwide don't use hand planes, AND save their gym memberships? They are, after all, ONLY interested in saving time. Some of these shops would have spent anywhere between $10k and $100k on jointing and thicknessing machinery. They'd be pretty interested in saving that investment too I should think.....

[rmihai]

It is rather technique than effort. I am still curious about Eucalypthus - maybe somone can compare it with hickory or sugar maple...

I didn't say I know to many planers... I worked innitialy nly with the common ones E.g. DeWalt, Makita, Porter Cable, Bosch. Then I tried something probably considered semi-pro: Powermatic, Jet, Shop Fox, Grizzly. While the first mentioned worked ok, I didn't find anything to like about those semi-pro. Until one day I tried a plane. And it worked and it was quiter, and cleaner and no dust -just shavibgs. Then I tried a jointer. Plane. I start it to like it... Than I got a Veritas scrub plane - a delight with their PM-V11.

There are too many people being afraid of trying. Just use the return policy guys: get whatever, try it -see if it is for you - if not take it back for a refund. LeeValley has a 3months return policy.

Good luck.

Well that is a damn fine effort, and no I'm not at all familiar with SM. However, each pass of an 8' board through the thicky would take about 30 seconds. If it was (say) 10mm out of thickness whack that would be three passes, and say two minutes. Finished ready to go to 150 grit sanding or smoothing plane (name your poison).

Respect for the way you choose to do things, but I think it's a pipe dream to say that thicknessing by hand plane is quicker than a machine.

Moreover, if what you say is true (that no machine you know of is quicker) then how come the 756,941¼ professional woodworking shops worldwide don't use hand planes, AND save their gym memberships? They are, after all, ONLY interested in saving time. Some of these shops would have spent anywhere between $10k and $100k on jointing and thicknessing machinery. They'd be pretty interested in saving that investment too I should think.....

[IanW]

It is rather technique than effort. I am still curious about Eucalypthus - maybe somone can compare it with hickory or sugar maple....

Well maybe I can comment. I lived a bit south of you (Guelph) for about 11 years and worked with a fair bit of Sugar maple. It's not the greatest wood to plane by hand, for sure. It's not that hard on the world's scale of hard woods, but it does have a dulling effect on edges - lots of pauses to resharpen if you use the old 'standard' tool steel blades, as I did back then. My workbench is sugar maple, made from raw material purchased off-saw from a small Mennonite mill. I did most of the prepping for the build by hand. It took me a bit longer than ten minutes to prepare the top pieces and legs - about two and a half days longer.....

Ok, so now multiply SM by a factor of 3, and you'll have some idea of what Ironbark and Bluegum are like.....

Cheers,

[elanjacobs]

How much time do you need to setup the planer? How much to clean it? How much to reolace the blades and how much to lubricate its parts?

Initial setup is a few hours. Cleaning time is zero (maybe a quick blow with compressed air). Blades take me about 20 mins every 3-4 months (and this is on a machine in an industrial setting). Lubrication time is zero.

You can dress a board by hand in 10 mins? I can dress a board in 30 seconds with machines.

There it not a person on this planet that can hand dress timber faster than a machine.

[elanjacobs]

Ya just need to toughen up a bit Luke. Young fella's nowadays wouldn't know the true meaning of hard work.

Cheers Stewie;

We know what it means....which is why we do everything possible to avoid it