Jointer question for the transitional neanderthal

[Tom Vanzant]

Daniel L.: from one wonky spiner to another, your most critical factor in transitioning to Neander is working height...if too high or too low, you'll know it. I use a #605/Hock to rough, 607/Hock to level and 604/Hock or 4-1/2/PM-V11 to smooth.
Daniel R.: Jet 6" short-bed jointer, Ryobi 10" planer. They come in handy within their capacity...my apprentices. A Delta contractor TS is sometimes used as well.
I am building a replacement base for a small but useful bench top, and decided not to use power tools. I found some very nice Doug fir 2x4s and have laminated & squared the legs to 3-1/4x2-3/4 so far, with 1-3/4x5 stretchers to follow. Joinery will be pinned M&T. The top will bolt to bearers. Pictures to follow later...

[Jim Matthews]

You may also get some relief pulling a hand plane, as you can get your legs to do more.
I would suggest that pulling directly toward you, rather than sideways - parallel to the bench, will help avoid twisting at the shoulders and neck.

To echo what has been said above, planing at your belt line will keep some flex in the wrist and elbows.

[ian maybury]

I guess that the sting in the tail in switching to heavier use of hand planes for jointing and the like may be that a decent bench with a flat top and effective workholding becomes pretty much a necessity...

[Jim Matthews]

True enough.

We have seen some slightly built, highly effective benches here in The Creek.
Stout and stable is preferable. Bolted to the floor works, too.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

You may also get some relief pulling a hand plane, as you can get your legs to do more.
I would suggest that pulling directly toward you, rather than sideways - parallel to the bench, will help avoid twisting at the shoulders and neck.

To echo what has been said above, planing at your belt line will keep some flex in the wrist and elbows.

This is good advice too - depending on what bothers your body, pulling may end up being much easier on you, or work both ways and trade off as needed.

Even with traditional western planes and a push stroke, I try and use my legs and core to do all the work rather than my arms. I can go much longer this way. It requires a lower bench to be effective, but if you're doing a lot of rough work, it really helps.

[paul cottingham]

I, too have a badly mangled neck. 1 completely missing disc, replaced with titanium, 2 more bad disks. I have horrific pain in my right hand all the time, mitigated with medication, so I can relate.

I found fiddling with bench height for planing of great help. I built a platform to "lower" my bench, and it really helped. Handles on planes make a big difference as well. Mybe try reshaping the handles on your tools, reducing the pressure on my palm helped.

i have also learned to pull planes, and use a left handed plow, which I can push left handed or pull right handed. I am going to replace my right handed rabbet with a left handed one. I have a good buddy with similar issues and he owns right handed tools so we swap, as needed.

i am a big guy 6'2" and 260, so i have plenty of mass for planing. It allows me to use my hands and arms less, and my mass and legs more. Your mileage may vary.

[Prashun Patel]

I too believe you can lose your jointer. Jointing an edge by hand is fairly straight forward. Jointing a wide face of a board, however, is both tricky to learn and hard on the back. It's no therapy; it's repeated stress that can ultimately be injurious until (and possibly even after) you become efficient at it.

So, I would get or retain a lunchbox thickness planer. You can build a sled for it, or even just roughly joint the face by hand and then plane/flip/plane to get a perfectly jointed board.

Personally I'd also retain a bandsaw. It is just so darn versatile and also saves the tedium, shoulder/back stress of hand sawing.

[Winton Applegate]

Daniel,

Hey, here is one other possibility; get in tight with your local woodworking club and perhaps they have some sort of shared shop with larger surfacing power tools that could get you in the ball park for your hand planing.

Also
My local wood supplier, small place not a big yard just a store front with some small choice stacks of wood etc.
. . .
well anyway they have a big O jointer and thickness planer that I have had them, way back in the day before I was a wood worker (I was a metal worker making bending jigs out of rock maple) they used to do some small milling for me and I could do the detail work.

Worth checking around.

[Winton Applegate]

Daniel,

Two more thoughts :
Do what the old dudes did in days of old; get an indentured apprentice, let him sleep under the stairs like Harry Potter and feed him on scraps. Of course if he survives the ordeal you will have to buy him some hand planes before you push him out the door to be on his own but you should get a good five or six years out of him before that time comes.



The other thought is I bet you could convince your wife or significant other "How much FUN scrub planing flat surfaces is".

Well I wouldn't ACTUALLY put money, as such, on that bet but you might try it.
I got Queenmasteroftheuniverseandbabybunnytrainer (my significant other) to actually resaw with me on a two person frame saw. Purple heart yet.

Well that lead to the OK to spend the money on a nice bandsaw for resawing. Quite an enthusiastic OK and two thumbs up as I recall.

[Shawn Pixley]

I refer to myself as a blended woodworker. I have a tablesaw and bandsaw but do my jointing with a #7. No jointer in my shop. Joinery is largely hand work. But stock prep is done through the aid of electrons outside my body. I am happy with my approach and don't plan to change. Sometimes I work strictly by hand if it is more work to pull out the tablesaw. Thicknessing is mostly done through resaw as I hate to turn wood into chips or sawdust if it can be avoided. Cleaning up the stock is done with handplanes.

On the neck injury, PM me if you like. I just had two implants and 8 Titanium screws in my neck as I had issues (Parasthesia, pain, and loss of strength / sensation in my arm). When they operated, the nerve was crushed between bone on bone.

[Winton Applegate]

Derek,

a combination jointer-planer/thicknesser

Yah I had the hots for one of those pretty bad there for a while. Mostly because it was a wide jointer for doing the reference face that wasn't too long to fit in my shop.

There weren't any combo machines like that available in America at a realistic price back then though I kept admiring them in the books and magazines I was learning from.

I finally realized I needed "help" when I found my self studying brochures for nice eight inch jointers (which will not fit in my shop comfortably) and tuning and polishing my metal cutting Milwaukee deep cut hand held bandsaw. I told my self that if I just removed eight or ten inches off the ends of the jointer "everything would be OK".

[Daniel Rode]

This is the main thing that has me thinking about a band-saw again. I dislike wasting wood; even cheap white pine. Economically, it's a tougher sell. One has to split a lot of boards to recover the cost of even a cheap resaw capable band-saw.

Thicknessing is mostly done through resaw as I hate to turn wood into chips or sawdust if it can be avoided.

[jamie shard]

I'm enjoying this thread. I just bought a thickness planer and will be building a sled. I'm also working on restoring a vintage 14" bandsaw for resawing. Kinda wish I did this earlier, but I also feel like I understand wood (and sharpening) a lot better by starting off neander.

[ian maybury]

That's no doubt true Daniel. There's a lot of mythology about bandsaws, but in the end it's one of those tools where if you pay enough to get one that built straight and sufficiently heavily that it doesn't deflect under blade tension the complications disappear and once reasonably set up it just works. One of the heavy duty big Italian models or something. Buying used is often a good idea, but it's better not to skimp on the spec..

[Judson Green]

And you'll soon, if not already, start sharping your own bandsaw blades.