I am making a pair of shaker bentwood boxes.
The tops and bottoms are made from 5 or 6mm material.
I had some resawed cherry and walnut (sounds like a delicious pudding), very roughly cut, perfect for my shaker boxes.
I thought this would be useful for anyone wanting to use handplanes effectively.
The boards were wound, cupped, bent along the length and of uneven thickness.
I didn’t have much thickness to play with, so I cut each piece to length.
This maximises the finished thickness after removing the wind.
I fix one discrepancy at a time. This is important, it keeps things simple and focused.
I plane one side roughly flat and smooth, I check for flatness across the width only.
Then I check for wind with winding sticks or a reference surface.
I remove the wind by planing a triangle of wood from each end of the wound wood.
I have shown it roughly marked in the photo.
Once the wind is dealt with, I then recheck flatness across the width and make any adjustments.
Finally, I check flatness down the length. This will almost always show a slight hump in the middle of the length. I adjust this if necessary, taking a few passes of diminishing length. I start and finish a pass 25mm from the ends of the board, then another pass starting and finishing 50mm from the ends,
With one face flat I thickness and shoot my wood.
I used my normal plane, scrub plane and shooting plane for this task.
My scrub plane removes approx 0.5mm of wood per pass.
Any regular plane can be turned into a scrub plane by grinding a radius on the blade. My blade has a 300mm radius. The scrub plane is faster and it greatly increases the longevity of my regular planes blade.
I managed to squeeze 6mm thick, components from my resawed banana boards.
I always follow the same steps, it works on any size board.
It was nice revisiting something I have done hundreds of times. Handplanes are well worth learning about.
