Easiest way to trim length of wide boards

[Steven Mikes]

I have two 18" wide board sitting on my bench that are just a fraction of an inch different in length, maybe 1/8". What's the easiest way to take that off the longer one? It's kind of a lot to plane, but too little to use a panel saw. Only machine saw I own is a bandsaw.

[Frederick Skelly]

Why not handsaw and clean up with a plane?

[Jim Clendon]

It will only take a couple minutes to plane 1/8" of softwood end grain and a few minutes to plane 1/8" of hardwood end grain with your jointer or jack plane. Then finish it with your smoothing, block or edge trimming plane. I assume this is 4/4 material.

[steven c newman]

Knife line then beltsander to get to the line..

[Stu Gillard]

This is where a Japanese saw like a ryoba can excel.

[Jim Koepke]

An easy way would be to jerry rig a long shooting board. (it can be done quickly for one time use)

Strike a line all the way around if you can. Chamfer the far end of the piece to help do away with any blow out or speltching.

At 1/8" and a shaving of 0.003" you would need less than 50 strokes with a plane. A hand saw would likely take more.

jtk

[Derek Cohen]

Mark the cut line on both sides of the board. This is where a panel gauge is helpful.

Use a scrub or jack plane with strong camber to take it down close to the lines.

Finish with a jointer plane.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Rob Luter]

Clamp the short board on top of the long board. Use the edge of the short board to guide your panel saw. As a secondary operation shoot the edges at the same time.

[Kevin Hampshire]

Am I missing something ?

Are there any of you that wouldn’t plane an 1/8” off both faces of an entire board? I don’t know the cubic volume of removing .125 inch across the end of an 18 inch board, but there isn’t that much.

All of the answers work. Even Steven’s belt sander.

Scribe a line and plane to it. It shouldn’t take much to adjust that length on a 4/4, 5/4 or even 6/4 board.

Not comfortable planing to the line. Clamp on a board as a fence and shoot the end square. The fence only needs to be wide enough for the edge of the plane. You really only need the fence for the last few strokes. You could even do this vertically.

You could clamp the shorter board to the longer, and use the short board (okay, Rob already suggested this) as your fence. Then you’d have both boards exactly the same.

Heck, you could scribe a line and do this with a sharp chisel!


I just did this for both ends of a 22 inch wide curly maple table. I have 27 inch wide curly maple table that also will need this.

I’m always learning, so if There’s a better way to do this...

[Steven Mikes]

Thanks for the suggestions, for some reason using a cambered blade on endgrain just didn't occur to me. I'll try it tonight!

[Derek Cohen]

Steve, I take back what I suggested - It was not clear to me (duh) that you needed to remove end grain (I was thinking it was with the grain). My preference now would be to use a low cutting angle, such as in a LA Jack. You could also use a jointer plane as a second alternative.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[chris carter]

I've done this a number of times with my fore plane with a heavy camber. Then clean it up with another appropriate plane. In fact, this is my usual method for wide boards that I have to cut with a panel saw. Just mark my line and cut as close as possible and then plane down; shooting board not really necessary. You just have to approach from both sides so you don't blow anything out.

[Doug Weiner]

(Completely tongue in cheek). Or you could just get a can of wood filler and build a 1/8” addition to the shorter board.

[Doug Dawson]

I have two 18" wide board sitting on my bench that are just a fraction of an inch different in length, maybe 1/8". What's the easiest way to take that off the longer one? It's kind of a lot to plane, but too little to use a panel saw. Only machine saw I own is a bandsaw.

It's probably taken you more time to read these posts than it would have taken to make the cut with a hand saw. :^)

[Steven Mikes]

Doug you must be much better with a saw than I, I cannot get a handsaw to stay on track if there is only 1/32" of material on the outside of the cut. I can follow a line very nicely with at least 1/2"...