Bill Lantry
Member
- Messages
- 2,663
- Location
- Inside the Beltway
Hey, folks,
The bench is proceeding apace (I have many pictures for when I get time to sit down and write up the story... It's a huge comedy of errors.
For now, though: the top is made of "hem fir" 2x10s, ripped into thirds, glued up, run through the planer in sections, and then the sections are glued. It came out almost perfectly even. So far, so good, right?
Wrong. I bought a 14" el cheapo plane from the despot. I know it's hit or miss on these cheap things, so I closed my eyes and blindly selected one box over another. And the thing, to my utter shock, worked great after a little adjustment and honing. Nice thin curly shavings. Took about five minutes to get out the uneven parts at the two glue lines. It worked so well, in fact, I decided to try to use it to flatten the whole bench. And that was my next mistake.
Long story short, every once in a while the blade "catches" on the wood, and digs in. In a couple places, it's caught badly. And forgetting the rule of holes (when you're in a hole, stop digging I persisted in my folly, thinking 'ok, I'll just plane this gouge out' And made it worse...
I feel like the only person I know who can make a surface *less smooth* by planing it. Any advice? Hope it's beyond "Bite the bullet and spend a couple hundred buying yourself a *real* plane"
Thanks,
Bill
The bench is proceeding apace (I have many pictures for when I get time to sit down and write up the story... It's a huge comedy of errors.
For now, though: the top is made of "hem fir" 2x10s, ripped into thirds, glued up, run through the planer in sections, and then the sections are glued. It came out almost perfectly even. So far, so good, right?
Wrong. I bought a 14" el cheapo plane from the despot. I know it's hit or miss on these cheap things, so I closed my eyes and blindly selected one box over another. And the thing, to my utter shock, worked great after a little adjustment and honing. Nice thin curly shavings. Took about five minutes to get out the uneven parts at the two glue lines. It worked so well, in fact, I decided to try to use it to flatten the whole bench. And that was my next mistake.
Long story short, every once in a while the blade "catches" on the wood, and digs in. In a couple places, it's caught badly. And forgetting the rule of holes (when you're in a hole, stop digging I persisted in my folly, thinking 'ok, I'll just plane this gouge out' And made it worse...
I feel like the only person I know who can make a surface *less smooth* by planing it. Any advice? Hope it's beyond "Bite the bullet and spend a couple hundred buying yourself a *real* plane"
Thanks,
Bill