As I try to decide what tools I should get for my workshop (see current thread on $4,000 workshop), I realize I should get a better feel for how long it takes to convert unfinished boards from the sawmill to nicely finished boards suitable for building bookshelves etc.
Let’s suppose I’ve got a board of white oak that’s been air dried. Its 8′ long and about 9″ wide and roughly 5/4 thick. It’s reasonably straight with only minor cupping or bend but one edge is a bit waney. I do the following (I’m not counting final handplaning or scraping):
1) Bandsaw remove about 1″ off waney edge.
2) Joint one face flat (3 passes?)
3) Joint edge (2 passes?)
4) Plane other face (2 passes?)
5) Tablesaw remaining edge.
What would be a reasonable time for each step working alone after you’d done say 50 or boards and were past the startup learning phase. In particular, I’m trying to figure where I should focus my spending. I have a high end tablesaw (Unisaw) so step 5 is purely dependent on operator skill. As I add up my near term projects I’m already looking at well over 300 bf that will need to be finished plus several hundred bf that will need some processing. As an example of “some processing”, the sawmill provides posts that are 3 1/2 x 6 in 10 foot lengths. I’ll be resawing about 10 of these in half (3 1/2 x 3) for deer fence posts.
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Assuming you have a jointer that can handle the 9" width this entire operation should take about 15 minutes, The other day I took a 5-1/2" wide by 7' long 4/4 rough sawn board and jointed one face, took 4 passses to clean up, ran through thickness planner to get 13/16" thick stock (4 passes) then Jointed one edge, 3 passes and then sawed to 4-3/4" and jointed with one pass, hole process including brushing off the rough stock with a brush to remove foreign dirt particles took me just under 15 minutes. I checked the time because I was sizing this board for a customer and I need to keep track of my time. It also included changing the saw blade from a fine cut cross cut to my rip blade. I may be slow, I'm sure there are experts out there that could do it in 1/2 the time. My jointer is set at a hair less than 1/32" stock removalper pass and I only removed about 3/32" per pass on the planer.
Edited 4/16/2006 5:58 pm ET by mrbird90
Thanks for the detailed response. The number of passes on jointer and planer were a little bit more than I was ballparking but it does seem that 10 minutes when you're on a roll might be a decent estimate.
I was hoping there wasn't quite so much time involved but subconciously I think I knew there's no free lunch. Would you say preparing a 6" wide board takes about as long as an 8" board? This would certainly be a factor in choosing an 8" jointer over a 6" jointer.Right now my inclination is to go with an 8" but the beastly size and weight of 8"ers over 6"ers is a real drawback for the space I have.
I have a 6" jointer so to do an 8" wide board I would rip it in half, joint each face and glue up with the jointed faces on the same side and then thickness plane. Definitely, get the widest jointer your wallet allows.
mrbird90,
why do that?
Why not make yourself a sled to go thru your planer?
A planer is just a jointer with the blades on top instead of on the bottom.. sure you'll need to make infeed/outfeed tables. but soo what! a fe bucks for materials and an afternoon and you can joint wood as wide as your planer is..
Have thought about it but never seem to find the time to build a sled. I usually purchase all my wood under 6", I'll buy 200 bdft of poplar and request 4-6" and all but one or two boards will be in this range. A couple will be 6-3/8 which means I waste an extra 3/8".
Can you explain the sled for the planer? or tell me a source I can reference? I don't have a jointer and have been "making do" on my planer. It sounds like an aid that I need.
breal,
Heck it's simplisity in itself. Just remember all a jointer does is make a board flat.
If you had a way to hold a chunk of wood dead level and planed off enough so one side is flat you've "jointed" it.
Mine is made from a piece of MDF that was real flat to begin with. Now to simple old me flat means I take a straight edge that I am absolutely certain is dead flat and slide it across the sheet to make sure no light shows thru. It isn't important to take a feeler gauge the way some folks talk about, if light get's thru it's warped or bowed enough to not accept it as is..
Then to the bottom side I screwed some 2x2 oak strips that I ran over my jointer first to make sure they were flat. I used white oak but I suppose you could make them out of most anything.. I'm terribly annal about some things and I used one every two inches, that is a 2x2 a 2 inch space and another 2x2 I ran them lengthwise.
Then I glued and screwed them ( being careful to countersink the screw heads well below the surface) together on my flat table.. Now mine is an old printers table, but a nice flat work bench will work just as well..
What you don't want to do is induce some twist or bow into the sled while you are assembling it..
along the each side I took another piece of 1/2 inch white Oak (I tend to use what's on hand) I made that piece a little over 2 3/4 inches wide It projected above the MDF by a little over 3/4 of an inch. Then I took another piece of 3/4 x 3/4 inch oak as a moveable side. Again I made darn sure to countersink the screws at least a 1/4 inch below the surface.
I don't want to shock the purists out there but I used sheetrock screws although I did predrill for them.
A handful of screws installed horizontally well below the cutting knives is all it takes to hold the board in place. I've found the screws only need to go into the board a short distance about 1/4 to 3/8ths.
Take a moment to average the bow or twist before running it thru. If you leave one side or corner stick up you'll need top remove a lot more material than if you average it out..
Now using one requires infeed and outfeed tables, but I can bang a set together so quickly it's not a pain, in fact I tend to use pretty much the same boards and when finished I pull the nails and set them back in the corner..
When setting up your infeed/outfeed tables use a taught string and I've found that's good enough.. Now adjusting those infeed tables for every cut could be a pain in the buttt, but what I do is slide some plastic shims under each leg. from experiance I've found that each turn of the crank on my planer is one shim. on anything less then 10 feet long I use four legs per table, one the 18 foot long stuff I use 6 legs per table..
Your planer may be differant, use whatever is the same thickness as a full cut. wood,tile, plastic,it doesn't matter..
Hmmm. I'd like to see that sometime. I think I could learn alot.
breal,
I should have mentioned that I make the bottom of the whole assembly into a box beam.
Never expect pictures of it,
First I just can't seem to post pictures. I follow the steps and am paitent but when I look seldom is a picture posted..
Second, it looks like the dogs droppings.. I don't take much time making jigs and such, I'd rather use that time building real stuff not stuff to make something do what it wasn't intended. Rude, crude, and fast as long as it works..
5-10 minutes; 15 if ya gotta roll out each machine, hook it up to the DC, etc.
That's effort (time to do the work). Duration (total elapsed time) for me is usually about a week. That's cause I've found I get better results if I repeat the whole process twice, with the board(s) stickered an adjusting to their new dimension in between. Been working a lot of maple lately and on at least half of the boards they absolutely needed that second pass (and in some cases were still moving too much and got rejected).
Now, you say "to finish"; I'd just consider that "roughed". Double or triple that time for sanding (3-4 grits), spraying, sanding, spraying... to really "finish" it. 'Course, you knew that ...
I charge the equivalent of 4 minutes per board foot, or 15 bd ft per hour. (Being European based I work in metric or in cubic feet.) This allows enough time to get the material out of stock, select best grain and match boards for all the parts in a piece of furniture, make preliminary cuts, and getting those parts square all round ready for subsequent operations. There's also an element of time in there for cleaning up afterwards and putting what's not required for that specific job back into stock.
I can plane up a single board in a few minutes but 4 minutes a board foot is good going if you've got a couple or three hundred bd ft to process by hand feeding over and through machines for a big job.
You're right. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
**Edit** PS. Incidentally, you have ~7.5 bd ft there. The arithmetic is quite straightforward. Slainte.
Richard Jones Furniture
Edited 4/16/2006 7:52 pm by SgianDubh
4 minutes....????
<le sigh..
the time it takes me to do that with handraulics, I'd need to pay the punters... sheesh.. Mine look purtier tho... ;P~
;)Mike Wallace
Stay safe....Have fun
ElBubba,
It really depends on your demand of perfection. I can prep air dried boards in a matter of moments. If I'm putting that board into a wall or flooring etc.. I set up to do at least a thousand bd.ft. at a time and quickly get into a rhythm. If perfection is demanded then it many take me many times that.
Perhaps some here might poo-poo me because a little warp or curve doesn't bother me.. If the board is long enough I can quickly press it into position and have it appear perfect.. When I first started out to do this timberframe I was determined to get everything to a level of perfection. I spent hours upon hours squaring and making timbers come out perfectly. Hand planing until they were square and true to the correct size. Then I sanded them starting with 36 grit and working myself step by step down to 220..
I carefully installed the timbers and over the past several years timbers have warped, bowed, and twisted, leaks during construction have caused me to go back and resand every single timber.
My first floor I carefully planned every board to square, true, and perfect.. I installed it and checked. even though every one was exactly the same thickness after one year you'd swear that no board ever saw a planer.. Nothing that normal sanding and finishing won't correct, but sure an eye opener..
I've spoken to a lot of really experienced trim carpenters and the perfect trim that they pay $15.00 a foot for is never really true and perfect.. they always need to bend or ease it slightly into place. Same with some really fine cabinet makers I know.. They always deal with wood not as a piece of machine work that demands perfection but rather as a entity that will be coaxed into place.
But there is a fundamental misconception about the process. Best practice does not call for planing each whole board to finished thickness. Rather, the first step is to lay out the pieces for the project on the rough stock, making allowance for cutting and tenons and snipe if your'e planer is afflicted. Then cut to length, and rip to width. You usually can get a bit of extra thickness that way. Choose the straightest rough lumber for the longer pieces. Boards with more cup ripped before thicknessing to get more thickness, etc.
Sometimes the lumber impacts the design as well. Let it speak to you as you lay it out. You can't make cutting diagrams in advance with rough lumber.
(Be sure to remove enough warpage to make cutting safe however, that's more important than an extra 3/32" of thickness.)
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