25
votes
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How do you plane end grain?
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 ...
- 59k
19
votes
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Recommendation for manual planing and sanding
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 ...
- 59k
14
votes
Accepted
How to make a good joint by hand planing both edges at the same time?
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.....
- 896
11
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How do you plane end grain?
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 ...
rob♦
- 18.5k
10
votes
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Hand planing edge joined board without tearout
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 ...
- 1,762
9
votes
How to make a good joint by hand planing both edges at the same time?
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 ...
- 1,409
9
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Recommendation for manual planing and sanding
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 ...
- 3,789
9
votes
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Best way to flatten boards by hand
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 ...
- 4,156
9
votes
What is an electric planer (hand tool) good for?
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 ...
- 12.1k
9
votes
Fettling a hand plane
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 ...
- 59k
8
votes
Accepted
What is the old-school way of smoothing a curved surface?
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 ...
- 59k
8
votes
Respirator / Dust mask for hand tools?
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 ...
- 59k
8
votes
How to handplane many boards to the same dimensions
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 ...
- 59k
7
votes
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How can I fix warping on board made of glued 2x4s
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 ...
- 20k
7
votes
Hand planing edge joined board without tearout
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 ...
- 2,176
7
votes
What is an electric planer (hand tool) good for?
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 ...
- 4,788
7
votes
Accepted
Is it needed to have the lever cap flat against the blade in a shoulder plane?
This is normal. Shoulder planes of this design always like this.
Maybe best example:
- 1,896
6
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How do I avoid tearout when planing end-grain?
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 ...
- 15k
6
votes
How can I fix warping on board made of glued 2x4s
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 ...
- 59k
6
votes
Hand planing edge joined board without tearout
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 ...
- 1,176
6
votes
Accepted
How should I set a hand plane down?
"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 ...
- 59k
6
votes
How do I set up the INGCO hand plane?
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 ...
- 59k
6
votes
Accepted
Securing long boards for edge jointing
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 ...
- 5,430
6
votes
Hand plane gouging wood even with fine adjustments
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 ...
- 4,156
5
votes
What is the old-school way of smoothing a curved surface?
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 ...
- 51
5
votes
What is the old-school way of smoothing a curved surface?
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 ...
- 20k
5
votes
How do I avoid tearout when planing end-grain?
plane inwards from edges.
chamfer the far edge and angle the plane.
support the edge with sacrificial wood.
use a shooting board.
- 1,824
5
votes
When is the ideal time to work green wood
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 ...
- 12.1k
5
votes
What is the old-school way of smoothing a curved surface?
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 ...
- 980
5
votes
How do you plane end grain?
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 ...
- 151
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