Shim while flattening?

[Mike Buelow]

Been getting into using a bench plane to flatten rough stock lately. Removing cup & twist is clear to me. However in terms of dealing with bow when trying to establish a reference face, one technique I haven't seen (yet) is in shimming the bowed piece of stock to hold the bow in place so that my plane doesn't smoosh it down. This would be analogous to using a sled in a power planer to joint the broad face of rough stock.

I've also read that it's an uphill battle to fight bow, so I'm questioning the viability of planer sleds anyway. Maybe the neanderthals have outsmarted the HS and their technology?

Thoughts & discussion appreciated as always.

[Doug Bowman]

A couple of different techniques come to mind - you can start on the concave side and work traversing the stock to level the ends to match the middle until you have the concave side flat enough to work the convex side - I have found this to be the quickest way as you do not have to get the stock completely flat just flat enough so it does not flex under planing pressure. You could do the same procedure and start on the convex side, but you have to flatten the whole face to keep the stock from rocking while planing (I always plane into a stop so this can be annoying)

[Dave Anderson NH]

More than once on really nicely figured tiger maple I have shimmed up a board on my bench to remove cup and twist with hand planes. After flattening both sides the boards remained fairly stable for table tops though I would certainly have second thoughts about using them for something like drawer sides.