Question about Dimensioning Lumber

[Ryan McKenna]

When dimensioning rough lumber by hand which rule of thumb takes precedence, “Remove equal amounts of wood from both faces.” or “Plane over thick initially and let the board rest (move) before finish plaining.”?

In a power tool world following both rules seems easy enough, plane over thickness, let the board rest then use a jointer to flatten the face side again and remove a few 1/16ths then final thickness in a planer.

With hand tools I have always been taught and read that once the face side is flat it gets left alone. If that is the case and I remove 3/16ths from the face side, I can only remove 1/16-1/8 from the other side if I want to leave the board thick before final thickening. Now the board will be sitting days with unequal amounts removed from either face which is supposed to increase the risk for movement.

How do you approach dimensioning rough lumber? Do you give one rule more weight than the other?

Background
I am working on a project that has me dimensioning a lot of rough poplar by hand reducing from 9/8 to 3/4. I have dimensioned some rough boards before but never this much at once so I want to make sure I do it right before I waste a lot of wood. The wood is kiln dried and has been stickered for a couple of weeks in my basement shop. I do not get a lot of shop time so dimensioning all of the wood will span a number of weeks/months.

[Warren Mickley]

When removing that much material there is a chance of warping. This is especially true of recently kiln dried material. However there is usually one side or the other that we want to favor for some reason, like less defects or more heartwood or whatever. What I recommend is making one side flat and going through a regular progression of face side ends etc, but leave the thickness a bit fat, maybe 1/32 or so, depending on width. Then when all the boards are in this condition, go back and carefully flatten the face and then plane to thickness. There is less warping when there is not much left to come off.

Incidentally, I wonder why you would take the boards from 1 1/8 to 3/4. We almost never use 3/4 inch boards in traditional work. 7/8 is much more common and would save some effort. And thicker material is less susceptible to warping.

[Ryan McKenna]

Thanks Warren. I will have a look at the boards I had planed a couple of weeks ago and see if they show any signs of warping, if not maybe I can get away with leaving them just a bit over sized. As for the reason I am aiming for 3/4 is I am building a set of built in cabinets for my Living room. I designed the cabinets based on current cabinet making designs that call for 3/4 face frames and plywood thicknesses. I do not have any big power tools so I am doing this by hand. I have not started planing the face frames yet so maybe I will shoot for 7/8 and see how they look. That would certainly save me a bit of time. I have already planed some parts for the doors to less than 7/8ths, would there be any issue with 3/4 thick doors in 7/8th thick face frames?

[Warren Mickley]

With frames thicker than the doors, the method for stopping the doors comes into play. You want them to just stop when they are flush, not to go in farther in order to hit a shelf or whatever. Some people deliberately make the doors a little thinner than the frames, and then glue a small piece on the edge of a shelf. Then they can plane down this piece until the doors end up flush with the frame. Or sometimes there is a center stile between the doors that has a rabbet on each edge of the stile and corresponding rabbets on the doors that can be adjusted do the doors lie flat. Think about how you will handle this before committing to dimensions

[Brian Holcombe]

I make my stiles heavier than the rails (in thickness) so to allow me to chamfer the inside edge of all door parts. It also allows me to finish plane the stiles without risk of running cross grain over the rails.

When working exclusively with hand tools you'll find the work goes much faster when you are working around the stock more so than rigidly set dimensions in thickness. A table top for instance or a door panel.