Jointing and Planing

2009.06.06

This afternoon, Frank came over with his truck and we loaded up all the wood for the workbench.  Frank has a nice basement shop with a growing collection of antique cast-iron power tools.

For the most part, we just used this impressive Powermatic planer.  Although Frank had the machine set to a relatively slow setting, the work still went reasonably fast, considering how much wood there was to run through.  Most boards took two passes to clean up the wide faces, but a few took a third pass.  We decided to leave the narrow edges as-is for now, and clean them up later after I glue the top sections.

Frank's Powermatic planer
A few boards after a single pass through the planer

The slab of 9/4 Oregon white oak was significantly cupped, so that took more work.  I had ripped one edge as best I could with my circular saw (which could not cut all the way through in one pass).

Eyeballing my intended width, Frank ripped the other edge on one of his table saws.

Frank rips the slab of 9/4 white oak on the table saw

Then he used this monstrosity of a 12-inch jointer to bring the cup down enough to run it through the planer.

Frank runs the white oak slab on the jointer

A few passes through the planer took care of the warpage and left me with a thickness of 1–5/8″ for the vise chops.

We hauled everything back to my place.  Now I can finally start gluing.