Hey Everyone!
New guy with a geometry/technique question.
I've been plugging away at making my first workbench, and I have had some growing pains learning how to mill lumber properly. The legs of the bench are 3" wide by 3" thick, I have been able to face joint one of the legs perfectly flat, but instead of moving on to the planer to plane the opposing face I just face jointed the adjacent edge of the bench leg, and did that all around until it was the size I needed (I don't know why but it didn't seem appropriate to put a piece that is only 3" wide through the planer, not to mention I was already at my jointer, so why not). All throughout the process of milling down that leg I kept checking the angles between the faces to make sure they were staying in square, and it seemed to me that they were, however when I went to check the thickness of the board at the other end it was at least an 1/8'th of an inch narrower.
So the question is a two parter:
1. Is it appropriate to use a jointer in lieu of a planer for all four sides? Or am I better just being happy that one side is jointed flat and then plane the opposing face?
2. Is it possible for all sides of a piece of stock to be 90 degrees to each other, and yet have two faces that are not coplanar? It seemed puzzling to me that I was measuring square all the way around, and yet the other end of the stock was a littler fatter. Was I just being sloppy with my square?
Thanks.
~Chris