Which technique will flatten a workbench the fastest

[Tom Deutsch]

Wow - unless this thread is from the neanderthal forum, I'd be intimidated by the answers. 1/8" is a lot of hard maple to sweep off a decent size area - or I'm a big wuss. I just googled and read about jack planes and winding sticks and they still might as well be sextants and divining rods as far as I'm concerned. LOL If I were the OP, I'd go for dressing the hump with a power planer and getting it roughly level as judged by a straight edge.

[Frank Drackman]

I would grab my trusty #8 and have at it. To flatten workbench tops I do the diagonal cross pattern. I find that if I am fighting the process that if I walk away for a few minutes and come back with a clear head things go so much better. Have fun & don't overthink it.

[Mike Ontko]

Wow - unless this thread is from the neanderthal forum, I'd be intimidated by the answers. 1/8" is a lot of hard maple to sweep off a decent size area - or I'm a big wuss. I just googled and read about jack planes and winding sticks and they still might as well be sextants and divining rods as far as I'm concerned. LOL If I were the OP, I'd go for dressing the hump with a power planer and getting it roughly level as judged by a straight edge.

I'm kind of in the same boat (though this boat has a fiberglass hull and 75hp Mercury motor and not cedar strip hull with maple paddles). Hand tools can be quick and efficient, when you've got the experience and the right hand tools. But from my perspective, in either case--human powered or electric hand plane--you're only working on an isolated section of the surface. If you want to be sure the whole surface is flat and perpendicular to the sides, then it needs to be referenced off of some other external source. And, that's what the router sled does.

I built a small router sled last week so I could reflatten the bottom of a table top that I had inadvertently sanded too agressively on one corner. Creating the sled and guide rails, then taking 1/32" off the entire surface took under an hour--and that's fast for me

[Brian Holcombe]

My benches are both edge grain laminations (you don't say what yours is). It's been my experience that both tops after glue up were globally flat, but locally bumpy. So, built them in halves and ran each half through the planer. Then I glued the two halves together.

If you're not yet a Ginsu Samurai with your hand planes, then your fastest may be to rip the top in half, flatten through yr benchtop planer (light passes, flip each time), then re-glue.

As long as your top is not bowed, but simply cupped, I'd bet it's thick enough that a thickness planer will joint it just fine.


On the other hand, if you are aspire to hand plane Ginsu samurai status, then this is a great project to learn on.

Although......this is what the Samurai might use;

[johnny means]

Rather than planing that much off, I would rip it into three or four pieces. Re-edge, properly matching opposing edges, re-glue (carefully), then plane. This would eliminate the need to remove that much thickness.

[Martin Wasner]

Rough it with a hand held power planer, gun it through a widebelt would be my answer. Unless you're mission critical on a thickness, in which case, you're hosed.

You could probably just put it through the widebelt though. Depending on the thickness, the hold down rollers aren't strong enough to flatten it out then sand it the way a planer would. Most hold down rollers are set around seventy five pounds I believe, even with doubles, that's only a hundred, fifty pounds of pressure, likely not enough. Good luck finding a planer that big anyways, very few shops in my experience have one that large. I'd likely just widebelt it, do a skip pass until I'm just hitting it, then do light passes until it's almost flat, flip it and grind hard until the back is close enough, then finish off the good face. It'd have to start out crown up.

A CNC would make short work of it as well.

[Allan Speers]

I would grab my trusty #8 and have at it. To flatten workbench tops I do the diagonal cross pattern. I find that if I am fighting the process that if I walk away for a few minutes and come back with a clear head things go so much better. Have fun & don't overthink it.

It's actually better, in most cases to use a smaller plane, like a jack or #6. It's a mistake to use a really long jointer, thinking that the plane will sort of "flatten the top for you." You can end up taking off too much, and still have twist, etc. (Those long jointers are meant for edge-jointing, not face jointing, though they can be useful on a bench when you are almost done, set very shallow.)

Best to use a straight edge & winding sticks, marking as David E mentioned above, and just take off what you need in smaller slices. Better control.

And really, a 1/8" hump in Hard Maple is not much at all, with a cambered blade.

[Myk Rian]

Router sled? - Has to be the slowest method.

But the easiest to do it with accuracy. I did a table slab with one.

[J.R. Rutter]

CNC with spoil board fly cutter, then widebelt.

[Erik Christensen]

when my bench top needed flattening post glue-up I used both methods - router sled on the top and hand planes on the bottom. I had no confidence in my hand plane skills hence it got relegated to the hidden side.

the OP asked for fastest - for me the router sled took about half the time that the hand planes did - I think they both came out about the same as far as flat goes - YMMV.

were I to do it again - if I was in a hurry i'd use router sled and if I wanted to enjoy the process and get a workout i'd go the hand plane route

[Mark Philippi]

To get that much crown flat I would rent or borrow an electric hand plane (like carpenters use on doors) Then finish with the #5 and #7

[Floyd Mah]

A few light passes with a scrub plane will remove the lump and then you can go on to the other planes. It's a good investment if you have to deal with twisted wood, rough lumber, or for doing prep work prior to planing.