Thicknesser planer

[JonnyMac]

Has anyone made a regular electic planer perform like a thicknesser i.e manage to get a good flat surface over a wide length of timber?
Ive got a few twisted hardwood sleepers that i would like to use but they need a basic dressing. Unfortunately thicknessers over here start at $700 for a robust model... which is a little too much to justify at the moment

 

[kctyphoon]

Craigslist... I think I got my delta for $150.. There's some bigger models by me listed for around $300.. If I had ore room I would have definately gone bigger, but my small bench top model is still great.. I think HF even has one now..

Like $230 w/ coupon I think: http://t.harborfreight.com/2-1-2-ha...082.html?utm_referrer=https://www.google.com/

 

[pauls_workshop]

Has anyone made a regular electic planer perform like a thicknesser i.e manage to get a good flat surface over a wide length of timber?
Ive got a few twisted hardwood sleepers that i would like to use but they need a basic dressing. Unfortunately thicknessers over here start at $700 for a robust model... which is a little too much to justify at the moment

When you say "regular" what do you mean? A handheld electric planer vs. a bench or floor thickness planer like KC's Delta? I also have KC's Delta and a hand electric Makita planer. You can do pretty good with the hand planer, but they are only 3 or 4" wide, so pretty impossible to get the whole face planer to better than the "cut" depth of the setting on the planer. Now you can get it real close, then lower the blade depth to very very tiny and go over the width of the board in several passes, then lower the depth yet again and do over. With 50 passes, in theory, can indeed get pretty flat, and after sanding then, do OK. I will be doing this myself in about a year after some of my alaskan sawmill cut English Walnut in 18-20" width dries after I cut it last summer. Too wide for my jointer or thickness planer bench/floor tools. But I haven't done it yet. Now one more thing, the above method will Plane but not JOINT. Meaning, you will not get perfect long end to end straightness, which a long table jointer would do. Even a benchtop or floor thickness planer won't do that unless you have a very long table to it, like 6 feet long in to out or so. But I would say you could get to about 1/8" of planer flatness end to end, even with just the hand electric planer method. Fine for a table top. - Paul

 

[theoldwizard1]

All of the "portable" thickness planers will "snipe" the ends of the board. The baord end will be slightly thicker or thinner.

 

[PBCampbell]

It's doable with a hand held electric planer. Search the Internet for "how to's". Search for flattening boards with an electric router as well. Boards were jointed and planed without electric and with only hand held tools for a very long time.

 

[tarbellb]

He is in Australia, so the typical GJ "go buy a old *** off CL for $30 bucks" isnt going to apply. Nor Harbor Freight.

I think what you are trying to do is going to be tough without the proper tool. Large scale planning is hard on a machine, even one meant for it.

Options would be:
_to setup a jig with a router?
_Or perhaps find someone locally who can run it through their own machine

 

[gungatim]

a thickness planer is just that, taking an even amount off while pressing the board down with rollers. Any twist will spring back once it comes out. I have seen sleds and shims used to do what you are asking but have not tried it myself.

one thing you can do is coat the board with chalk/pencil/whatever, and use a hand plane on the high spots to get one side fairly flat, then run through, flip, run again. I have used that method on boards too wide for my jointer before and can get it pretty flat that way...

 

[gungatim]

ahh PBCampbell beat me to it...yes, an electric handheld planer will work as well...

 

[Sal Bandini]

I 2nd the suggestion to make a jig and use a router. You can flatten pretty much anything with it.

 

[pauls_workshop]

I 2nd the suggestion to make a jig and use a router. You can flatten pretty much anything with it.

Another good idea using the router with jig OR a thickness planer with a long sled to force the planar flatness from end to end like a JOINTER will do on its own jointing the first face. - Paul

 

[Git]

Router Sled

You can make a really simple one or go wild. Here is an example

 

[Richard Cranium]

Wow that one is large, If I need some thing like that big, I feel I would be ahead to take it to a wood working shop. My time is valuable also

 

[JonnyMac]

Ok should have said elecrric hand plane...
I like the router sled.. i do have a router but boy that looks like it could take some time..
I was looking for something like that but for a plane. Mounting the plane is the tricky part, a clamp on the hand grip os probably the only option.. time for some thinking..

 

[carbon]

The term for what you want to do is "jointing." If you ever buy a planer and don't have a jointer and wish to joint with it: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=jointing with a planer

Of course routing will work as well, but that seems slow on a big piece.

 

[Sal Bandini]

Jointing is across the edge. OP wants to flatten the surface, so it is thickness planing.

 

[My Old Tools]

Jointer is used to get a flat face before you thickness plane. You need one flat face to register on the bed. It is also used to joint edges for glue up. If all they were good for was edges you wouldn't have 16" wide ones like my Northfield.

For big timbers, too big to handle, you can take out most of the twist with a good hand plane or electric door planer. Then you can use a 12-13" portable planer like a bench top Delta, flip it upside down, put it on one end of the timber, and let it walk down the timber to the other end taking a light cut. You'll need to work around whatever cribbing you have the timber sitting on. I have seen this done in several timber frame shops because 12" portables are $150 used while a 12" wide Makita electric surface plane is $1500.

 

[carbon]

Jointing is across the edge. OP wants to flatten the surface, so it is thickness planing.

What My Old Tools said.

Edit: to be clear, Sal is wrong. Jointing is to get a surface flat, no matter what side of the board. Also, if you run a twisted board through a thicknessing planer, you get a nice, evenly thick and twisted board. Why? Assuming you don't turn the planer upside down, the registration face, or bottom of the board running through the planer, is what is going to be "copied" at the top of the board, where the planer's cutters are.

The link I posted a few posts above shows workarounds to flatten with just a thicknessing planer, mainly using shims to hold the board in one place and slowly grinding down the wood pass after pass. Like routing it, only faster.

 

[AndrewDouglasBird]

Having only used a planer a few times in my life, I never considered the need to joint the flat surface of a large board before planing. I've also only ever seen up to an 8" wide jointer, so it would have never occurred to me that you even could joint large boards. It's very interesting to learn that a thickness planer won't take out twist in a board and will actually follow it.