Planes + planers for jointing wood

[mrFinpgh]

This is inspired by something [member=37411]ear3[/member] just posted on the thread regarding planers.  Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how to get lumber flat using a plane and jointer.

For those of you who do go down this road, what is your approach?  How flat are you getting one face before you feel like it can be passed through the planer with a reasonable expectation of ending up with a relatively straight board?

What about those of you don't use a lot of hand tools, but also don't have access to a jointer?  What do you do to get the boards flattened out enough to work?

Thanks,
Adam

 

[ear3]

It depends on the nature of the warping.  Thick cupped boards can usually just be run through the planer, concave side down, to flatten one side.  Boards that are twisted are also generally straightforward to deal with.  I will use a jack plane to knock down the high corners -- if the twist is substantial I might work more of the face with the plane as well.  This won't get the board perfectly jointed, but flat enough to feed into the planer.  Bowed boards are the biggest challenge, and on those I will work both with a power planer and hand planes.  I lay the board on my flat workbench (concave side down), then use a block and a scribing tool to mark a consistent line on the edges all the way around the board.  Then I work with the power planer to get relatively close to that line.  As mentioned in the other post, this is where the on the fly adjustment of the HL850 really comes in handy, as I can deepen the cut as I approach the middle of the board, and lessen the depth on the exit.  After the power planer I then work with a jointer plane both parallel and perpendicular to the long edge.  This usually does the trick.

 

[Birdhunter]

For me, the answer depends on what I am doing with the wood. Most of my projects require very high precision thus the wood needs to be straight and true so I get the first surface totally flat on the jointer before running it through the planer.

I recently had to flatten a 18" by 14" table top that had warped a little. I used a piece of 3/4" partical board as the reference surface and shimmed the table top so it would not rock going through the planer. I took two extremely light passes and the top was perfectly flat.

 

[ScotF]

A general rule that I have followed is to get 70% - 80% of one face flat before planing thickness. You want one face to be stable and not rock or move and as long as that happens on the bed of a planer you can get flat, parallel face when it runs through the planer.

 

[Slider613]

If the board is too wide for my 6" jointer (which is often the case), I may just rip in half and glue up the boards before going in the planer.

Sometimes For a wide and relatively flat board I'll just try light passes in the planer. I've also had decent luck taking a piece of melamine and using shims and hot glue stabilize on side of the board and pass it through until flat then flip.