Surface Planing Twist, Cup, etc Without a Jointer
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I have a planer but no jointer. I have a stash of old oak shelves in my barn. I’m pulling them out and cleaning them up. Some of the boards have some twist over the length. What is the best way to face joint without a jointer so that I can remove any twist or cup with only my planer?
Replies
First, cut them as short as you can for the intended use, this reduces the range of twist in a single board. First, if they are really rocking use a handplane to rough one side's high spots to reduce the rocking.
Make a sled to carry the board through your planer and use wedges and hot glue to hold the board stable on the sled. A small thin backer block screwed to the sled is a good idea to keep the planer from pushing the board off the sled.
Run the sled and board (take light passes) through until you feel the top surface can serve as flat for the other face, then take it off the sled and finish up.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2005/01/01/flatten-boards-without-a-jointer
Beautiful. I think that’s exactly what I was looking for.
I made the sled from that article. I have seen other more elegant ones since then. Keith Rust's design continues to work for me. The few hours on a Saturday morning I spent to make the sled has paid dividends for years.
I have no jointer, and do pretty much what MJ wrote above. Except I've never found the need to build a sled.
There's no point in taking the twist out of a 10 foot board if you only need 3 footers. Getting rid of twist on short boards is much easier.
Cupped is easy. Cupped side goes down, so you have two edges on the bed. Once the crowned part is flattened, flip it over and alternate sides.
But there, too, make your boards narrower if you have much cup. If you have a 12 inch wide 4/4 board with a lot of cup, you might have only a 1/2 inch left when the cup is gone. But if you only need 3 inch wide boards, rip them slightly oversize, and voila -- most of the cup is gone. Finish planing and then rip square edges to final dimensions.
Ditto all of the above. I made my sled a number of years ago and I have "straightened" many many BF of lumber with it. My sled is a torsion box about 1 1/2" thick (rigid and light) and I covered it with scrap plastic laminate. This makes the hot melt glue easier to scrape off. As mentioned, I use small wedges and hot melt to hold the work piece. Of course, cutting and ripping the work piece into smaller pieces before planing will save a lot of wood.
Most people won't go for this, but for what it is worth, a #5 handplane with a sharp cambered blade can take the twist out of a length of board much faster than setting up a sled. You only need one face to be flat enough to sit on your planer bed without movement or flexing. Plane at right angles to the grain. You will get scooped cuts very quickly. Plane the opposite side to be flat. Then plane the handplaned side to remove the scooped cuts.
The plane I use is an old Stanley from eBay, cleaned up. You can find videos on how to restore handplanes. A #5 won't need much fussing with sole flattening or tuning compared to a smoother that is typically shown on the videos.
Jweisgram, that's what I do. No sled.
You could use a hand plane to flatten one side first. It's not that difficult and I'd rather do that than go to the gym. Paul Sellers has YouTube videos on how to do it.
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