hand planing

[Aaron Kline]

How long does it take on average to hand plane a 1" board to 3/4? My 2nd brand new planer is acting flippy and Im considering switching to hand planes to plane boards, if they are fast enough. Thanks

[Jim DeLaney]

It'll depend on the length, width, and type of wood.

Using a scrub plane to hog off the excess, followed by fore, jack & smoothers, I could probably do a 4 foot long, eight or then inch wide pine or poplar board in less than half an hour.

The trick is getting it to a uniform thickness all over. Not real hard once you get the hang of it, but the first couple will probably be a bit frustrating...

[Steve Wargo]

How long is the board? What type of wood? How wide of wood? Etc. I think the less time consuming thing to do is simply thickness with your planer close and finish up with a smoother. That's usually the procedure I take. In fact I still have the same planer blades in after about 800bf of cherry, sassafrass, poplar, and mahogany have passed through it. Who cares what it looks like out of the planer if you finish it properly. When I first started to thickness my own lumber I would take a 4/4 poplar 6' long by 8" wide to 5/8" in about 45 minutes. That's fails in comparison to a thickness planer. But after thicknessing a few hundred bf of cherry and walnut and mahogany it gets much faster. Last time I thicknessed by hand I did 70" by 21" cherry panels from 4/4 to 3/4 in about 30 minutes. That's with a near perfect finish at the end needing only a final touch-up with a rehoned iron. That's still way longer than a planer, but if you have kids sleeping, then it makes it hard to run a planer. Hope this helps.

[Bob Marino]

My hats off to Steve and Jim. That's pretty quick working. I sometimes use my hand planes for some slight beveling, finishing tenons, smoothing and such, but to be able to take down and smooth a rough board to a set, even thickness is amazing to me . I'd have peaks and valleys all over the place.

Bob

[Steve Wargo]

It's the way it was done years ago. Actually, I cheat a little. I'm a fairly large guy so strength is not an issue. I've taken an old number 4 stanley handy man, open the mouth and put a gently camber on the blade. The result is a scrubbed finish that really doesn't require too much of clean up with a jack and smoother. At least not as much as requires if using a stanley, or LN Scrub plane. Since the hollows left are much wider, and nearly uniform in depth there is really only the issue of cleaning up the high points with the jack. I was actually amazed at the ease of pushing a stanley 40 the first time I tried one. Probably about 1/4 the effort needed for my plane, but it's also very slow in comparison. Hope this helps, and hope that someone else will try this and let me know what you think. Oh, one more thing. Since you're hogging off a good bit more wood than normally, it's extra important to have a nice keen edge on your iron.

[Tim Sproul]

Since you don't handplane much ('least that is my assumption given your question.....), I will tell you that you also need a very beefy workbench with a FLAT top. I know this.....because I've got a lightweight plywood and 2x4 bench I'm currently using that skitters and haws all over when I'm planing....and is more difficult to produce flat boards because the top isn't all that flat. Nevermind that it is also fairly common wisdom in the hand tool world...

I've got lumber coming to make myself a good bench for hand planing.


Other thing you can do to speed "production rate" when hand planing...leave the inside surfaces rough when making case work or the underside of a table rough....flat, but rough. This, of course doesn't work as well if you do your joinery with tailed devils. Tools such as routers are predicated on having well milled, 4-square stock with smooth surfaces to reference off. If you chop your mortises, saw and plane or pare your tenons and saw your dovetails...you can leave the secondary surfaces as fairly rough.

[Jim DeLaney]

My hats off to Steve and Jim. That's pretty quick working. I sometimes use my hand planes for some slight beveling, finishing tenons, smoothing and such, but to be able to take down and smooth a rough board to a set, even thickness is amazing to me . I'd have peaks and valleys all over the place.

Bob

Once you get the hang of it, it's easier than you might think. The first couple you do can be quite daunitng, though.

About 45 years ago (!) I took a shop class, and our introduction to stock prep was the instructor giving us a 3 foot piece of rough-sawn pine - about 5/4 - and telling us to make a 'perfect' 7/8" board from it - sides and faces both parallel and perpendicular. I probably spent about three hours on that one. Some of the class never did get it right. I do recall one guy bringing in a piece that was so thin it could've been used for veneering