Thread: Plane before thicknessing ????

Listen to your friend. You can feed a curved piece through the thicknesser and it will simply come out the other side as an even thickness curved piece. You must get it flat first.

Or you could make and use a Thicknessing Jig by Schtoo.

Originally Posted by Groggy

Listen to your friend. You can feed a curved piece through the thicknesser and it will simply come out the other side as an even thickness curved piece. You must get it flat first.

Spot on! You need a jointer AND a thicknesser. The jointer gets the bottom square (and the sides), and the thicknesser does the opposing surfaces. They're complimentary.

See, you only thought you needed one bit of kit. Now you need two. Aren't you glad you put up this post? Any time, mate. Any time...

there are work-arounds: making frames/sleds to support timber whilst the first side passes through the thicknesser, adding supports to a tablesaw fence to straighten one edge, but it depends upon the timber you want to use and your patience and skill. Most people I know who started off with the "thicknesser" ended up with a "planer" pretty soon afterwards.

Cheers,

Groggy,
Yes I can understand that, and thanks for the quick response, but I think he was implying that the thicknesser would replicate every little lump and bump that the feed rollers encounter which also seems plausible.
So, does this mean that every one of you who raced out and bought one of the GMC specials already has some method of planning a face of the rough sawn timber lurking in their respective sheds?

(Wow three more responses in the time it took me to type this!!)
Ian

Yup.. you want a planer, but the problem is 'Banana in - Banana out'

If you have nice straight boards then you can get away with just a thicknesser, they have some jointing effect by their very nature. But back in the real world boards have bow and twist. You can work around that with a planer sled, hand planes, a router on rails etc. But whatever you do, you needs to get one face reasonably straight before the thicknesser can do it's job properly.

Anyway , get the thicknesser, but be aware of it's limitations and be prepared to work around it and maybe get a jointer later on if you need it

Cheers

Ian

Hi Ian,
As they say different strokes for different folks, some people need the timber they are using to be straight and square and thicknessed to parallel for others its not so much of a problem it really depends on what you are doing/making if for instance you were making some architrave you would not joint it,just thickness it, if you were making say a window sash you would face and edge it ( that means straight and square) so its up to you and what you can afford etc. Let us say you buy a 6”/150mm jointer and have a 12”/300mm thicknesser as you can see you can only face and edge 150mm in width but thickness 300mm so in theory you need a 300mm jointer to match the thicknesser, in practice in a small shop you would not go this way because of cost you would maybe stretch to an 8”/200mm jointer and on the rear occasions that you need to face a wider bit of timber you can use the jig setup as per “Schtoo”diagram.Again if you need to work with wide boards all the time you may find a combination Planer/Thicknesser the way to go as you get a 300mm jointer as well as a 300mm thicknesser for little money say Hare and Forbes t260 for about $850 will cut 260mm in width or Carba-Tec and Timbecon have simlar machines.Hope this helps…Peter<o></o>

I've seen a few combination machines available that are a planer and a thicknesser. Generally you use the top of the machine as the planer and then (sometimes after a minor set up change) you can pass timber through the thicknesser. I'm not sure whether they are as good as separate machines, but might be cheaper and take up less space.

I'm a relative novice to woodwork, but I get to use a great workshop on the course that I'm doing. I've been taught to always plane two sides (face then edge) to a 90 degree before passing through the thicknesser for the other two sides. I did a bit of this last night with some pretty rough timber. All 13 pieces I did came out perfectly square after I was finished (the machines are set up beautifully). Dead easy with the right machines.

It is possible to get the two edges flat and at 90 degrees to each other with a hand plane, and then you can use a thicknesser to complete the job. Needless to say this is far more time consuming and difficult (certainly was difficult for one of my meagre abilities), but quite satisfying.

This question is exactly why i made the Jointer/Thicknesser video.

Download it and it should clear up any major questions on the use of each machine.

http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...ad.php?t=35496

post #1 has the instructions and post #2 has the link for the Jointer video

Absolutely correct - one of the reasons that a jointer is really just one part of a pair with a thicknesser.

Of course, the jointing can be done with a handplane (and in fact I always finish the jointing job done on the machine with a plane).

Originally Posted by Auld Bassoon

(and in fact I always finish the jointing job done on the machine with a plane).

Mate, I'd got to the point where I thought you were a rational person. Now, I'm not so sure...:confused:

Forget rational and sane

I clamp a router to my sawmill frame and have a 48" jointer

I've also been known to eyeball a board and knock the high spots off with a power planer then feed it through the thicknesser

Whatever, you need one fairly flat face on a board before you feed it into the thicknesser. A jointer is just an easy way to achieve that.

Cheers

Ian

Originally Posted by keith53

Mate, I'd got to the point where I thought you were a rational person. Now, I'm not so sure...:confused:

Keith,

After the jointer, I can feel small but discernable ridges along the edge of a board, say. After I've planed it, flies have trouble landing as it's so smooth

Also, for edge jointing, I like to plane a very slight cup into the centre of each edge (lengthwise).

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Gumby, I do intend to get those videos as soon as I can get around my AV software's objection to the bit torrents. In the meantime I've asked Groggy for some assistance.

I do understand the Garbage In Garbage Out issue with warped and twisted stock ,and I was intending to use only straight material, probably finished where possible with the table saw, and at this stage I don't have any projects in mind which require ultra accurracy, so I think IanB and Olddogs advice is in line with where I want to be.

Thanks again

Ian