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In Western woodworking at least low-angle block planes are favoured for planing end grain. These will generally give the best result, but any plane can do it if the iron is sharp enough and you take a very light cut.
Terminology note: a plane's blade is traditionally referred to as an iron, in older books sometimes as the cutter.
are there any gotchas ...
19
when I am levelling out wood with my plane, I get little pits (likely I suspect from the blade chipping against denser areas.
This is called tearout, it is not caused by denser areas of the wood (in fact it can be common in softer sections of a piece of wood).
It occurs when bundles of wood fibres literally tear free from the surface of the board instead ...
14
I've been curious about this as well. Illustrated using my mastery of MS Paint, it appears you clamp the boards together, plane to your heart's content, then un-clamp and just flatten the boards out...
first (exagerated)
then...
9
I'm going to take a stab here and guess that the intention is that if you take two boards clamped together you could plane two edges at the same time (assuming your plane blade is wide enough). Those two planed edges would fit perfectly together if you rotate one board 180 degrees before fitting them together. This is true even if you're not planing at ...
9
This is likely to be related to the direction of the grain:
So you should pick the direction of planing depending on which way the grain slopes.
Unfortunately however, some timbers (particularly some types of hardwood) have "interlocked" or "wavy" grain:
The best thing I can suggest is that you get yourself a belt-sander as it's quite easy to remove these ...
9
I would highly suggest a cabinet scraper. It is designed/used for this explicit purpose: smoothing the location where two separate pieces of wood meet, and smoothing their surface to be uniform. It is faster than sanding AND by its nature created a flat surface, where sander could create waves or organic and smooth surfaces.
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For end grain a razor-sharp blade is most important, and you can skew your cut to slice the fibers rather than chop them.
The type of plane isn't particularly important, but one with a low cutting angle works best. For instance, you can use a low-angle block plane or a bevel-up jack plane with its blade sharpened to a low angle. You can also convert a ...
9
This is going to run long so TL;DR warning.
I have a #5 faithfull handplane (don't judge me, I didn't know any better!)
No judgement here! Two Faithfull planes formed the core of my handplane collection when I started out and I use both still regularly. I actually rate the Faithfull planes as possibly the best of the budget planes available over here, ...
8
This is a tangential point to your main question but has a bearing on my suggested solution:
I have heard that the old-school way of creating a flat surface is to use a hand plane, and that if you use the right tools, you may not even have to sand because the surface is so smooth.
While that can be true it does tend to get overstated by some planing ...
8
You are a brave individual--attempting to hand plane. I've successfully hand-planed my workbench and here was my method:
Use two totally flat sticks (winding sticks) on each end of the board to identify twist. If there is twist, begin by skimming from the high surfaces.
Starting at one end of the board, stretch one stick across the grain and look for light ...
8
And I'm wondering whether there is any task where it would really have an advantage over other tools such as hand planes, a thickness planer, a belt sander, etc.
Electric planers are coarse tools for coarse work. As such, you won't see one used by a fine furniture maker for anything beyond the rough dimensioning of stock (removing gross amounts of twist, ...
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My hope is that in general hand tools will not produce fine enough dust to be concerned with.
While it is now fairly widely known that the finer dusts are the most hazardous (as produced primarily by certain power tools) this can tend to obscure the fact that all wood dust is a potential health hazard.
This position is considered overly cautious by the ...
7
This is not really an answer but a large comment that could point out several pitfalls that could have brought you to this point. I am not sure of the best advice for your situation as the warping looks significant. Like discussed in comments I think you might be better off starting over and paying attention to points below.
Knots and Pith
Depending on ...
7
I'm not sure you're going to find a ton of woodworkers using these for fine woodworking or furniture construction, but they are commonly used by construction workers/general contractors for things like shaving down doors, evening out floor joists, etc.
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A correctly setup handplane works perfectly for this. Make sure the mouth is tight, that the chip breaker is sitting tight on the blade and close to the cutting edge. Also ensure that depth of the cut is as slight as it can be.
Beyond that there different types of planes which will reduce tear out (search for smoothing plane or if you have too much money, ...
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Everything I've read says you need to clamp a waste block on the end of your board to prevent the tear out. It is even recommended to do this if you are using a router or jointer.
By keeping the pressure on with a waste block it won't be able to splinter down the board.
Source
Of course the other option would be to plane toward the center from both sides....
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I just hand-planed several dozen blocks for an end grain cutting board using my shooting board.
It worked pretty well, there was minimal tearout on maybe 10% of the blocks. I could have improved on this with a sharper blade and tighter tolerances on the shooting board.
A temporary shooting board is pretty easy to make, might be worth a shot!
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I know cheap construction 2x4s can warp
There are multiple possible causes for distortion in a glued-up panel like this. Often more than one of them are to blame, although there may be one major culprit. I suspect that's the case here.
Since your tabletop ended up 'in wind' (twisted) and didn't cup or bow I think the wood itself is likely to be mostly or ...
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"Lay your plane on it's side son."
This is the long-standing advice. It is old, nobody knows how old, but many (most?) now don't do this, some to deliberately buck Old Timer advice (which can often seem folksy and overly cautious*) but some because they've thought through the problem and come to a definite conclusion not to.
The evidence is in and it ...
6
This plane has a similar layout to the current Stanley SB4 (it has had various names over the years) and the "Windsor Design" No. 33 plane sold by Harbor Freight in the US.
The mechanism in these planes is essentially what is used in most modern spokeshaves, so searching for tips on how they are adjusted would bring up much more advice. But it's essentially ...
6
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like your bench has any provision for a deadman. This would allow you to clamp one end of the board in the face vise and support the other end with the deadman.
I think you could make a passable one by bolting some T-track to the underside of your bench top, putting some hex-head lag bolts (to fit the T-track) in the end of ...
6
I often end up with some minute thickness variation along the length of the boards.
This is hand-tool woodworking, some variation from part to part is par for the course. We aren't machines after all1. So if the variations you're getting are already minute you're ahead of the game :-)
With regard to apron pieces, there's a bit of a dirty secret in that ...
5
Preventing tear out in reversing grain in panel glue ups can be handled with a card scrapers (and holders - highly recommended if you use card scrapers), scraper plane (see Lee Valley), cabinet scraper (Stanley #80), or a high angle (>45°) plane. A higher, not lower, cutting angle prevents tear out. For the 45° bench plane, putting a 70°-80° bevel, about 1/...
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The tool for this is called a scorp. There are small ones for carving out wooden spoons, and large ones for chair seats. They are like a drawknife, but curved.
Here's an example:
That said, unless you are making a lot of these, and willing to invest a fair amount of effort, it might not be worth it to buy a scorp. A curved hand scraper (just a 3 x 8 or so ...
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Was also going to suggest mini block planes as well for the outside of you "U". Their size lends to detail and you can easily shape the blades to be soothing blades which prevent the edges from digging in (More used for flat surfaces but if you already own these tools it could work.)
While looking at pictures I also found references to shaping planes which ...
5
plane inwards from edges.
chamfer the far edge and angle the plane.
support the edge with sacrificial wood.
use a shooting board.
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Was my green wood too green and I should have waited longer?
In my experience, I don't think there's such a thing as "too green." Green wood is nice to work because its moisture content means it is still quite soft, even for so-called "hard" woods like oak and hickory. Working green oak is a dream compared to seasoned oak. However, as with all unseasoned ...
5
There is a compass plane, a plane with bent or bendable sole.
Unfortunately I couldn't find an image with a proper license (sic)
The radius on a compass plane is probably too big for a stool.
There is also the spokeshave with much shorter sole.
It can be concave or flat or convex.
A third solution is to mount the stool top on something that lets it rotate ...
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As I mentioned in my question, I found the solution just as I was about to post the answer. I first read @Graphus's answer to someone's question:
hand plane controls (bevel down)
I had always tried to have a tiny mouth opening to reduce tear out, but then I read in Graphus's post that if the chip breaker is close to the plane iron, you don't have to worry ...
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Are there any other options open to me?
There is one other option that you didn't mention. You can build a "router sled" to flatten wide boards.
This is basically two rails on either side of the board with a narrow platform that slides along them. A router rides on the platform, and the platform has a slot cut through it that the bit projects through to ...
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