Thread: Planing straight and true

Try cheating; I use a 6" long bed jointer for all my squaring, but for a glue joint it gets a final really fine cut on the machine then a single stroke with a finely set no.4 smoother, just to take out the almost imperceptable ridges left.

I enjoy setting up and using hand planes; I can smooth down a panel quicker with a plane than I can with a sander, plus I get to listen to the radio at the same time. However, truing and squaring boards is too time consuming for me to bother with.

Just a thought, the other day I was at our local coopery and they had an old device they used for getting the stave bevels exact: it was basically a jointer shape as we know it, but with a plane blade set just proud of the surface and the staves were dragged over it against a wooden fence. How hard would it be to build a really l-o-o-o-o-n-g wooden plane mounted upside down with a fence? Maybe you could figure out a way to actually insert a normal handplane into it?

fit a fence, or clamp blocks under it with g'clamps.

Planing 2 boards at a time should get you close enough, as suggested.
Other than that it is practice.
Mind you, I've been using hoop pine a bit lately, and the softer timber is far easier than the usual bastard Aussie timber I would use... so maybe practice on softer timber?

If you want real accuracy, make a long shooting board.

Hi

How successful are edge-trimming planes like Veritas?

Thanks

Andrew

All pretty good & standard advice so far, but p'raps the best advice would be to just stick at it - you will make a few boards narrower than intended, but after a bit, things will fall into place, and you will be able to do it without thinking. The slight twisting you refer to is common. It is due to a combination of blades not being dead square to the sole, compounded by your body angles altering on a long stroke, and shifting the pressure slightly from one side to the other. I always check the board at start, middle & end as soon as I have planed it straight, and if a twist is starting, I lean on one side at the beginning & slowly shift to t'other as I finish the stroke. Just keep checking & adjust until it's right. On long boards, it is a bit harder, as you have to walk along it, keeping the plane pressure constant as you go.

I use my left hand as a 'fence' as we were taught to do way back. It does entail the risk of occasional splinters, as Ern sez, but it gives you a steady reference. The trouble with fixed fences is that it presupposes your blade is set dead square, and that might be equally as tough for a beginner to get right. I doubt any blade is ever absolutely square, as the edge itself is going to be a few microns out, plus our eyes just don't see down to micron level! Which is where the skill comes into handwork - you have to make the slight adjustments needed with a less than perfect tool to get perfect results.

And while planing both edges at once ensures mating surfaces (side to side, not end to end - you still have to get that right), if they are more than a degree or so off square, you have a big problem when you come to glue up, 'cos your nice, close-fitting joins want to slide past each other as soon as the clamps are clinched up. The time wasted looking for cauls to clamp across the joins, and holding everything with both hands & trying to tighten the clamps with your feet would be better spent getting the edges straight & square in the first place. I tried all sorts of shortcuts years ago, too.

Cheers,

Derek posted something which may help make planing to a line easier - but I may have it muddled. Something about marking your line and then planing a chamfer to it. Makes it easy to see while you're jointing when you're getting close and what the variation along the edge is.

Originally Posted by rsser

Derek posted something which may help make planing to a line easier - but I may have it muddled. Something about marking your line and then planing a chamfer to it. Makes it easy to see while you're jointing when you're getting close and what the variation along the edge is.

I think that was for thicknessing, Ern, not jointing....
Cheers,

I saw a good trick on the LN YouTube channel to help make sure your blade is straight.

Take a strip of timber maybe 10mm thick, place it on the bench on edge so the 10mm side is facing up.

Take a shaving with your plane cutting with first one side of the blade then the other. Its surprisingly easy to tell when the shavings are approximately the same thickness, indicating that the blade is straight. Of course, if you're keen, you can check the shavings with a micrometer......

Any slight misalignment of the blade is most apparent at the extremes of the cutting edge.

Hi Tiger,

It verges on distressing to read some of those posts on trying to find short cuts and bodgy means of doing things that in the end of the day require a fair bit of learned skill. No one will learn to use a No. 7 satisfactorily in a few minutes. Care and patience applied over many hours plus a well sharpened and fettled plane are required to get the knack. It's a great feeling when you get a full length full width even thickness shaving. Although I've got a very nice machine planer I still take a single pass shaving off edge join boards when I'm after a first class near invisible joint.

Keep at it,it's worth the effort!

Old pete

One thing else occured to me. If your board is a bit twisted on the face side and clamping it distorts it to straight, and then you do a good job of jointing, when you take it out of the clamps it'll resume its twist and the edge will be twisted?
Or if the board is flat but it's clamped into a twist... same thing?

Cheers
Michael

Originally Posted by old pete

Hi Tiger,

It verges on distressing to read some of those posts on trying to find short cuts and bodgy means of doing things that in the end of the day require a fair bit of learned skill. No one will learn to use a No. 7 satisfactorily in a few minutes. Care and patience applied over many hours plus a well sharpened and fettled plane are required to get the knack. It's a great feeling when you get a full length full width even thickness shaving. Although I've got a very nice machine planer I still take a single pass shaving off edge join boards when I'm after a first class near invisible joint.

Keep at it,it's worth the effort!

Old pete

Really do think you are making hard work of a simple job, and despite what some claim, first use of a sharp No 7 will get it perfect.


The trick is the way the boards are, they have to be faces in or faces out, that way the join will be perfect, if you place both the faces away from you or towards you it will not work.

By aligning the boards that way you do not need an anally fettled plane nor exact right angles on your blade, the novice can pick up a sharp plane and get it right.

It was the revelation of a lifetime when I read that trick somewhere, made my life so much easier.

Originally Posted by IanW

I think that was for thicknessing, Ern, not jointing....
Cheers,

Thanks for the correction Ian.

As a newbie planer with trainer wheels on, I'm not sure what diff it would make as btwn wide or thin surface to take down

Originally Posted by rsser

...
As a newbie planer with trainer wheels on, I'm not sure what diff it would make as btwn wide or thin surface to take down

Not a lot, I guess Ern, but when you are jointing, you are simply trying to make an edge straight & true, not working down to a gauged line, whereas when thicknessing, you're working down to a set level usually defined y a gauged line. Frankly, I think chamfering the edge is not a good idea for age-challenged eyes like mine - I would find the edge of a chamfer harder to see than the little sliver which appears as you get to the marking gauge line. But whatever works, works!

Cruzi - many things are tough when we first tackle them, so don't be too tough on those struggling with the dark arts - especially when they don't have someone right there to point them in the right direction. We were shown the both-edges-at-once method of jointing by our manual training teacher back in the fifties. He showed it to us out of interest, but insisted we learn to do it "right" - and with #5s to boot! Getting the edges square was ok after a bit, but when I got my hands on a #7 later in life, shooting straight edges suddenly became a lot easier!

As I said above, getting long boards meeting perfectly from end to end can be harder than getting square edges, at times, so you need to work at it to get 100% wood contact (or just a touch of 'spring', if that's what floats your boat). Any dips or slight hills formed when doing both edges at once are automatically doubled when you bring those edges together.......

Cheers,

Jointing is definitely one of the easier tasks with a plane, because it does not matter if you are not square, it does not matter if the plane is not fettled, it does not matter if you don't have much experience, because the way you align boards means that any error is not magnified but reflected in the other board.