OK, to start with I am a real newbie when it comes to woodworking. I bought a set of Stanley/Footprint planes without doing any research. I have a #5, can this be used for doing edge work. I am making a table for my wife's shop out of Hemlock S2S 2 x 4"s. I ran the faces through my ridid planer, now I want to plane the edges before I laminate them together. I am using Hemlock because I have never done any work like this before. I will be using mortice and tenons for the legs and aprons on this table. I figured it will be good practice and cheaper if I ruin any wood. If I cannot use the #5 Footprint can anyone make a suggestion as to which plane I should buy without have to take out a loan to do it.

thanks

Dan 

Run the 2x4's on edge through the planer.

 

NO OFFENSE, but being a newbie the wood is already square and doesn't need to be "Jointed" which is what you are trying to do to take off those "Rounded" corners and make the edges nice and flat so you don't have to spend a month with a belt sander smoothing out the top.

 

The plane is for wood that is "Rough" or wood that has a warp or twist or bend to straighten it out.

 

Draw an arrow on one end of all of them.

 

Run them all through on edge by setting the planer to the measurement they are now, run them all through (Arrow up) on one side till the rounded edges are gone, then flip them and do the same on the other side (Arrow down).

 

Save that plane for a screwed up piece of wood that hasn't been S4S'ed already. 

I agree with Mike ( dragon1 ) you can run them one edge trough you thickness planer and save yourself a lot of time and trouble. Keep your cuts light and work your way down to the desired point you want to be at. It takes a little longer but it saves the blades and the machine. Also as you feed them through, move them sideways so they pass through a different section of the blades. As always use care and caution when working with power machinery you are not familiar with. Go slow practice good safety and enjoy the experience.

 

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Wayne Mahler
God bless and protect our troops that serve so we can be free.

Dan,

You can use your #5 for edge jointing. You will want a good straight edge to check for high spots and a square to check for trueness to the face. Good string or fishing line will work for a straight edge. Work on high spots first then go full length.

Once you get one edge done you have a good surface to measure the other edge with. The #5 is called a Jack plane because it can be a long smoother a short jointer or a scrub plane. I took the same approach bought a Jack and some wood that wouldn't break the bank if it ended up firewood. Google edge jointing by hand and see what you find. Remember there are a lot of ways to do things and a lot of opinions. Key is try things see what works for you.

Mark

 

Thanks guys. I ran the 2 x 4's through the planer on edge. It took several passes on both sides to remove the rounded edge. I was not sure you could run them thru on edge. Will that be could enough to laminate them together without using a jointer plane or just check them with a straight edge and go from there. Thanks for bearing with me on this, it is starting to get fun.

Dan

Dan, since I built my first chair, and I edge joined my seat halves with my low angle jack, I will never let another glue up pass without edge joining by hand first. The power jointer is good, but you'll never get that jointer as close as you can a hand plane I am convinced. When you perform a glue up, edge to edge after you joined it with a hand plane, you'll not be able to see the glue line, only where the grains change will you see it. You'll see the glue line if you go straight from a jointer to the glue up. It's fine to straighten your edge out on the power jointer, but for final glue up, run your jointer over it first, your #5 will work fine.

It's fun stuff isn't it Dan?

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

If your jointer leaves that bad of an edge John, it needs a tune up.

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Bob Kloes
www.bobkloes.com

Great advice Bob.

Jointer is fine though, it's not that it leaves a bad edge, it's just that in my opinion, the jointer cannot beat the edge of a hand plane. With the constant contact of the blade on wood from a hand plane, and the skipping cuts of a power jointer with a 2 blade or 3 blade head, it just cannot be beat, again in my opinion. Now that being said, I have never tried a hellix head or any of the newer style cutters out today. Possibly they could leave as fine an edge as a hand plane.

Bob Kloes said:

If your jointer leaves that bad of an edge John, it needs a tune up.

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Bob Kloes
www.bobkloes.com

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

By the way Dan, to answer your question, yes it would be good enough for a strong glue joint, but  this would be a good time to break out that hand plane and use it, this would be a great excersize for you.

(How do you spell excersize? Spell checker is telling me it's wrong but offers no alternative.)

Dan Shuflin said:

Thanks guys. I ran the 2 x 4's through the planer on edge. It took several passes on both sides to remove the rounded edge. I was not sure you could run them thru on edge. Will that be could enough to laminate them together without using a jointer plane or just check them with a straight edge and go from there. Thanks for bearing with me on this, it is starting to get fun.

Dan

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

Dan,

If you don't have clamping Cauls you might check this out.

http://www.mikes-woodwork.com/Cauls.htm

They really help hold your boards when you are gluing.

Also some where on this site there is an example for using uni-strut.

 

Mark

Now I dont feel so bad about my spelling. I think that jointing an edge by hand is a good exercise in hand planing.
Just messing with you, John.
John Morris said:

By the way Dan, to answer your question, yes it would be good enough for a strong glue joint, but  this would be a good time to break out that hand plane and use it, this would be a great excersize for you.

(How do you spell excersize? Spell checker is telling me it's wrong but offers no alternative.)

Dan Shuflin said:

Thanks guys. I ran the 2 x 4's through the planer on edge. It took several passes on both sides to remove the rounded edge. I was not sure you could run them thru on edge. Will that be could enough to laminate them together without using a jointer plane or just check them with a straight edge and go from there. Thanks for bearing with me on this, it is starting to get fun.

Dan

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John Morris
The Patriot Woodworker

I use hand planes alot. Maybe too much. Straightening an edge with a jointer is fine. Even if you had a helical cutterhead (they are great but expensive) you will still need to remove tool marks. One or two passes with your jack should be fine. Just be sure not to plane it out of square on accident. You dont need a high dollar plane to do good work (you dont need a plane at all but they help). As long as your plane has a flat sole and a sharp iron, it will work fine. Make do with what you have for now and as your skills progress, you will learn what you like and dont like about your tools and be able to buy new ones to suit your needs. I am thinking about posting a blog on planing techniques that you should check out. Technique is so important.

Adam that would be great if you would post a blog on planing. And I fully agree that spending your money sensibly is critical. Dan the "make do with you have" is very sound advice. I have spent a lot of money things that I very rarely look at let alone use. A lesson learned the hard way but one that will be remembered for a long time. Thanks Adam

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Wayne Mahler
God bless and protect our troops that serve so we can be free.

Well put. I just posted a discussion on the Tradisionalist Woodworker group on this site. Check it out.

Wayne Mahler said:

Adam that would be great if you would post a blog on planing. And I fully agree that spending your money sensibly is critical. Dan the "make do with you have" is very sound advice. I have spent a lot of money things that I very rarely look at let alone use. A lesson learned the hard way but one that will be remembered for a long time. Thanks Adam

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Wayne Mahler

God bless and protect our troops that serve so we can be free.

hey dan, were you using the edges for the top to make a tabletop 4 inches thick or was it going to be 1 1/2 inches thick?

Whenever I need to remove those rounded corners, I just run them through the tablesaw.  so that a blade width is taken off.   IF it is for a glue-up, I usually don't worry too much about leaving saw marks.   Seems that the glue likes saw marks, gives a bit more area to grip.   On the edges that will show, a jointer plane would be used.  I'll even used a "regular" plane, IF say that edge needs to be curved.     On the Coffee table I'm working on, a plane did a good job of smooth the curve.   A picture of how I held the top in place, for planing:I just worked "downhill" from the middle. 

The table will be 3 1/2" thick. I have adjusted the length from 80" to 45". I figured it would be so heavy I could not lift it. The table will be supporting an industrial single head embroidery machine, about 100 lbs.

dragon1 said:

hey dan, were you using the edges for the top to make a tabletop 4 inches thick or was it going to be 1 1/2 inches thick?

That's what I figured when I gave you the advice to run them through the planer, though it would have worked just as well if you were going the other way too.

 

Another way to glue it would be to drill holes every 16 inches through 1 board and use that as a guide to drill them all.

 

Glue them up and then put threaded rod through the holes with big washers and nuts on them and tighten it up.

 

Keep HOT water and gloves on hand to wipe up the excess glue ( will make the faces ALOT easier to sand out.)

Well, I finally got to spend some time with my hand planes. I learned some valuable lessons this last weekend. If you are sweating profusely you probably are doing it wrong. I was trying to remove the tool marks made by the Rigid planer, I succeded in learning a little about tear outs and the importance of planing the wrong direction. I had a friend come over and I showed him what I was doing. He explained the tear out thing to me. I thing I could use some help on though is while using my smoothing plane I had a tendency to remove more wood off of one side than the other. I had to go back and plane just part of the edge in order to square up the edge to the face. I was using a combination square as my guide. It appeared the planer blade was even coming out of the throat. Is it that critical that I need to measure the amount of blade protruding or was I doing something else wrong. I am currently reading Handplane Essentials by Chris Schwarz, great book but there is only so many hours in a day.

Dan

Dan,

Reading Handplane Essentails (and Chris's other books) changed the way I work wood. I am currently reading The Anarchists Toolchest by Chris Schwarz and I love it. He is an excellent teacher.

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Adam Welker
Red Car Construction and Fine Woodworking