Trying new woodworking skills #7: Dressing up rough lumber

Well I felt like I did enough practicing with scrap. I decided to clean up the QS white oak for my end tables.

I started by cutting most of it down to 60” and 40” lengths. I left 4 pieces full length, (96” – 102”). This made it easier to handle. I ran each piece through the jointer. Made a flat face and a square edge to it. I had some minor problems using the jointer. I would feed, then change my hand placement and feed the rest of the way through. When I did this I would get a snipe mark where I paused.

I then planed them down. I started slow, running each piece through even though some only shaved a little bit off the ends. After a few passes I had brought it down so I was planing the whole length. I slowed the machine down and only took off 1/32” each pass. I flipped the boards and cleaned off some of the snipe marks from the jointer. I did not get any snipe from the planer. I have followed Loren’s advice to raise the ends of the feed tables 1/16”.

The boards look great. This was my first experience starting with rough sawn lumber.

Some off the boards need to be 1/4” thick. I ripped these to width, set up my table saw and resawed them in two passes. I did not like resawing with the table saw. Some day I’ll get a band saw for this type of work. After resawing I planed them down to 0.25”. This is the only problem I had using the planer. A piece broke off the tail end and flipped up through the blades, made alot of noise and went out the dust chute. I opened the top and checked for damage. I couldn’t find any. The rest of the planing went well with no obvious marks from the blade so I guess I got lucky.

I’m very happy with the planer, (DeWalt 735). This opens up a greater selection of lumber for me to buy. I look forward to using a wider variety of woods in the future.

BJ