This is a view of the shop setup to be used for running
the boards through the planer. The red
arrow points to the planer. To its right
is a red large shop vac that will be connected to the planer for chip
collection. The blue roller stand in the
foreground will support the cedar on the infeed side and the yellow roller
stand in the background will provide support as the cedar exits the planer.
Preparation before surfacing is to check the boards for a
few things. First, is to look for loose
knots (just one found) and remove.
Second, is to check for any staples or metal. Each of the boards had a plastic tag stapled
on so all those get removed. There was
also one staple on the face of one board and it got removed. Reason I am so careful is that planer knives
spinning at 8,000 RPM’s hitting a nail or metal staple nicks the knife chipping
the knife’s edge leaving a ridge on the surfaced board the size of the chip
which is not desirable. There are a few
fixes but none quick or cheap so it pays to carefully check before running the
boards through the planer. Third, is to
check and see if the board has a cup. If
it does the crown goes up as shown in the drawing below. That way the outer edges will ride on the
planer’s base keeping the board from rocking.
The bottom photo shows a board after the first pass through the planer
with the original rough surface on the left and the fresh cut surface at the
right. Another pass or two through the
planer will flatten this face getting rid of the rough surface.
Because you can always plane a board thinner but you
can’t add material back on if too much it taken off very thin passes of about
1/64” get removed. As I was working
through the stack unknown to me there were four boards that had split as they
had dried. On the left are two of them
and the others are similar. Because most
of the board is in good shape I just cut off the split part then ran them
through the planer with no problems.
After making several passes getting the first face about 95% flat I flipped
the boards over, made a couple of passes then called it a day. All in all, it took about four hours of
preparation and planer work to get to this point. While doing some cleanup I checked the to see
how full the 32-gallon shop-vac was since before starting it had been emptied
and to my surprise it was completely full as shown in the right photo. 
Once all the boards have one rough surface flattened,
smoothed and the second face nearly smoothed establishing one straight edge is
next. I could have continued surfacing
but wanted a break from it. All of the
boards have slightly uneven rough sawn edges and most of them are slightly
curved. Usually, a straight edge is
created on the jointer or by attaching my 8’ level to the table saw fence and
running the board against that. There is
a common problem with either method in that the reference surface on the
jointer or the 8’ level is too short to fully engage the 6’ board’s length both
before and after the cutting point.
Ideally a 12’ long truly straight edge is needed. My fix is to use a router and an 8’ long
straight aluminum guide clamped to the board.
This works since the board is not moving and I’m matching the edge to
the guide I have two routers that would
work but one has a plunge base with a flat side that will work very well for
following the straight edge. First, the
clear base currently on the router has a large opening required for large
diameter bits and here a small ½” diameter bit will be used. Changing the base to one with a smaller
opening gives me more contact surface between the router and the board making
the router more stable. When changing
bases, I like to make sure the hole in the base is centered on the router’s
drive shaft. It’s not essential here but
if a guide were mounted to the base, it would be. Centering is done using a centering cone (red
arrow) shown in the photo below. Once
the cone centers the base the screws holding it on are tightened.
Here are two views of the setup used to give me a good
straight edge using the router.
Before clamping the board in place, the edge is checked
and the edge’s crown or high point of the curve gets selected to be the cut
face. The red line in the drawing shows
the desired straight edge on a very bowed board. Here the photo shows a combination square
(red arrow) set for the offset needed for the router to trim just a tiny bit
off this edge. The same offset is set at
the other end. Now any bow extending
beyond the line in the drawing gets trimmed off resulting is a nice smooth
straight edge.
Here everything is set to be routed with the router in
position ready to go. After a pass down
the edge, it’s straight and ready to have the rest of the surfacing done so
both faces are flat and smooth. One down
and 36 to go.
More surfacing is next where all the boards are surfaced
down 1/64” per pass until all the defects are gone and the faces are
smooth. The two photos below show all
the cedar pieces with both faces surfaced smooth and with one edge routed
straight. The material is sorted in
stacks by thickness because some boards were slightly thicker, flatter or
smoother that others and I quit surfacing when both sides were smooth. On the far-left side the pieces are .55”
thick and each stack is .01” thinner until you get to the far-right stack which
is jumps by .02” and is .48” thick.
Having different thickness means I can mix and match them for gluing up
the main pieces to hit my minimum 1½” thickness plus a little cushion in case a
problem shows up when the three pieces get laminated together.
Next Up – Edge Trimming, a Twisted off Screw & Gluing
up Rails
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