This weekend I started working on an 8/4 rough sawn Pine board. It has twist and a considerable bow. Pine is pretty soft and easy to plane but when it is 9 feet long and 12 inches wide it is quite a workout especially when I really don’t have some essential hand planes. I have a vintage No. 7 Stanley I bought on eBay for $85 dollars. This thing was Rusted and did not have a very flat sole. I spent a weekend cleaning it up and truing the sole. I also paid close attention to the mating surfaces of the frog and the surface the frog mounted to to ensure it was flat and had solid contact. I flattened and sharpened the blade and this plane has been a good performer.
I started to tackle this job because I want to make some stools from this board. I am going to resaw it and get two 1 inch boards to produce the stools. My jointer is only 6″ wide so I figured hand planing will be my angle of attack. After about an hour of scrubbing the board with the No. 7 I started to realize this is going to take a very long time and it is not going to be very smooth so I figured I will use my planer with a sled and shims to flatten one side. I got this Idea on the web from a wood working magazine. It looks pretty viable so I constructed the sled. I used two 96″x12″x3/4″ MDF and glued them together on a flat surface. I glued a stop on the infeed end to keep the board from sliding off the sled when being planed. I haven’t used it yet but I will post my results and hope this makes quick work of this board. I will use the TS55 for the edges.
