Matt Estlea
How to Prepare Rough Wood
You have the right tools for the job, so it’s now time to get some material prepared! I warn you, this is a tiresome process and can be a test of patience. It is essential that your tools are sharp and well set up before starting this process. If not, you’re going to get extremely frustrated!
How to Plane a Face Flat
Planing one face flat is the first step to preparing a piece of wood to be straight, square and parallel. It’s important to get this initial face accurate as all three remaining faces are referenced from the first face. Get it wrong, and it’s going to take a very long time to fix!
How To Plane a Face Flat
You will learn:
- How to read grain directions
- How to remove cups, bows and twists
- How to check a face for flatness
- How to use winding sticks
How to Plane an Edge Square
After establising one initial face, we need to plane an edge square to it. This can be challenging depending on the length and thickness of the board but there are a few small tricks to help you along the way. It’s also a very transferable skill.
How To Plane an Edge Square
You will learn:
- How to check for square
- How to use a cambered blade
- How to produce a straight edge
- How to avoid common mistakes
How to Thickness Material
You now have a face side and a face edge that are perfectly flat and square to one another. Now comes the time to hog off some material and make the two faces parallel to one another. This requires a lot of elbow grease so get warming up!
How To Thickness Material
You will learn:
- How to adapt your plane for thicknessing
- How to layout a thickness line
- How to efficiently remove material
- How to check for accurate thickness
How to Edge Joint Boards
The boards you purchase from the wood store are often not wide enough for certain projects. This means you will need to edge joint boards in order to make up the correct width, and there is an essential technique to give you long lasting glue joint.
How To Edge Joint Boards
You will learn:
- What a spring joint is
- How to plane a spring joint
- How to clamp edge joints
- How to correct cups and bows
How to Remove Tearout
When planing boards, you may encounter whats knows as ‘reversing grain’. This causes tear out and is quite possibly one of the most frustrating things in woodworking. But there are a few easy ways to reduce or eliminate it from happening completely!
How To Remove Tearout
You will learn:
- What causes tearout
- How to use Low Angle Planes
- How to sharpen a back bevel
- How to tackle ‘rippled' grain
How to Square Endgrain
After flattening, thicknessing, and jointing has been complete it’s time to move onto the final stage of dimensioning material, endgrain. This stuff is hard as nails and required very sharp and well tuned tools. This is how to plane the stuff.
How to Square Endgrain
You will learn:
- How to use a shooting board
- Choice of blade angles
- How to avoid breakout
- How to avoid chattering