I have some 600x1200mm (24"x47") hardwood (iroko) boards at just over 27mm (>1") thick that used to be old work tops from a school.
I would like to clean them and use them for a kitchen worktop as it's beautiful and robust wood.
The issue is that they currently have bowing and cupping and I don't have a thicknesser and certainly could not afford one that would have the capacity to handle such a wide piece of hardwood.
The options, as far as I can tell, to me are:
- attempt to plane and thickness the entire board by hand using hand planes.
- Downsides here are that it'd take forever and I am not that confident in my skills to be able to do this to a high standard.
- Pony up and pay a professional company to plane and thickness the entire board
- downside here would be cost and potentially losing a lot of material.
- Dejoint the board using a circular saw & guide so they are narrower, then plane and thickness those narrow boards - either by hand or with a more easily available thicknesses, rejoint those boards together.
- My fear with this approach is that I won't be able to get the joints spot on and they'll be a very obvious gap along its length.
- Will lose some material off the edges.
- Pros are that I lose less material off the top face.
Are there any other options open to me?