Good evening all,
It's been over 3 years since I've visited this site due to many personal issues, inter alia. I've started back in my hobby by building some small end tables, and in the process, it seems I've forgotten some of my earlier tricks. In making the table tops, I seem to remember that it was acceptable to flatten only one side of each board (two per table top) to "approximately flat", match plane them, glue up, plane to thickness and flat to enough to sit on the table frame (legs and aprons), then finish plane the top side to an acceptable finish. At least that's how I remember the process. The stock I'm dealing with is cherry, but it presents with a variety of challenges: cup and wind. My question is, because I refuse to use anything but hand tools, is this a reasonable approach? I've completed two of three tabletops, but with the maximum expenditure of effort with scrub, fore and jointer plane. I don't mind the work, but I don't want to miss an obvious step. I would like to know this is how earlier wood workers approached this task. Because of the inherent imprecision in this process (absent electric joiners, planers, etc.), I would imagine earlier wood workers would take similar shortcuts. Attempting to get two boards absolutely flat on both sides before edge joining seems an exercise in futility. Get one side (on each board) flat, glue-up, then treat the two as one board when attempting to flatten and thickness to final dimension. Am I remembering this correctly?
Thanks in advance,
Allan
It's been over 3 years since I've visited this site due to many personal issues, inter alia. I've started back in my hobby by building some small end tables, and in the process, it seems I've forgotten some of my earlier tricks. In making the table tops, I seem to remember that it was acceptable to flatten only one side of each board (two per table top) to "approximately flat", match plane them, glue up, plane to thickness and flat to enough to sit on the table frame (legs and aprons), then finish plane the top side to an acceptable finish. At least that's how I remember the process. The stock I'm dealing with is cherry, but it presents with a variety of challenges: cup and wind. My question is, because I refuse to use anything but hand tools, is this a reasonable approach? I've completed two of three tabletops, but with the maximum expenditure of effort with scrub, fore and jointer plane. I don't mind the work, but I don't want to miss an obvious step. I would like to know this is how earlier wood workers approached this task. Because of the inherent imprecision in this process (absent electric joiners, planers, etc.), I would imagine earlier wood workers would take similar shortcuts. Attempting to get two boards absolutely flat on both sides before edge joining seems an exercise in futility. Get one side (on each board) flat, glue-up, then treat the two as one board when attempting to flatten and thickness to final dimension. Am I remembering this correctly?
Thanks in advance,
Allan