Best way to dimension rough lumber with hand tools only

[tvrgeek]

#1 Learn to sharpen your saws. Can't stress that enough. A nice sharp rip almost drops through wood. Diy a vise and get a decent file.
#2, The joys of a scrub plane. Add in a couple winding sticks and you get close amazingly fast.
#3, Then go to the big planer an jack

Sand paper and "Scary sharp" I gave up on. I use a 350 and 1200 DMT diamond , 16000 Sharpton and a strop. Can't tell you how much money I spent on jigs, machines and other systems. Oh, I do have the Veritas jig for when things get way out of whack. And of course, the Rikon low speed grinder with a CBN wheel.

I am moving more to hand tools, but, yea, TS, BS, jointer, planer.... I have whacked really rough stuff to size with my cheap WEN electric hand planer. Even quicker than the scrub plane. You don want to put a really ugly bit of wood on a power tool!

Amazon.com

 

[Charlie]

Wow, that's incredibly generous of you! Yes, I'm in Cary so I'm not too far away from Lake Wheeler. I don't have a way to transport lumber at the current time, so I'd need transportation too. I'd be happy to compensate you for your time and assistance.

As for thickness, right now I'm planning on making a 36"x 54"x 9" hand tool cabinet that is mostly 3/4" or 5/8" sides and a back made of four 1/2"x 9"x 54" boards joined together into a panel. Instead of wasting a bunch of lumber planing all the way from 1 1/2" down to less than half that, I think it would be a good idea to resaw everything down to the required thicknesses and then plane them. A bandsaw would be ideal for this, but I can do that beforehand with hand saws. It's going to take a little bit of work, but it's a lot better than having to plane down 6/4 lumber to 1/2" or 3/4" by hand.

If you're available this weekend, that would be perfect. If you want to send me a direct message then we can exchange information and figure out scheduling and compensation.

If possible, maybe I can just run some additional boards through just to skip plane them and save me some pain in future projects. But I'm open to whatever amount of help you're willing to give me.

Thanks again for your help, Charlie! This is going to save me an incredible amount of work. I'll still have a lot to do, but it will be the fun parts of making dovetails, rabbets, and dados, not spending 20+ hours planing rough lumber into submission.

PM sent.

 

[Daniel A]

Daniel, welcome to the forum. I have processed projects 150 to 200 board feet by hand. I not going to lie, it’s hard work. So if you want or have to do this, then I would suggest you rough cut your materials to length and then set out flatten one surface at a time. Set your goals small and don’t set any hard and fast deadlines. Cut yourself some slack because you’re going discover muscles you forgot existed. I’m not trying to dissuade you I’m still doing a lot of my work by hand. I do however want you to be realistic about what you can accomplish in a day or an evening and enjoy the journey.

Thank you for the advice and for the managing of expectations. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself; ultimately this is a hobby, not a job, so I'm going to do this only as long as I'm enjoying what I'm doing, or at the very least that the results of my work is worth the input. I think for now I'll follow your advice, cutting down my lumber to the size I need for a project and then focusing on one face at a time. Trying to dimension all of it at once would probably be too overwhelming and stressful.

Someone has very graciously offered to let me use their setup to dimension some of my lumber, so I may end up not having to do all of it by hand. It's still going to require a lot of hand tool work, but it should save me 20+ hours of (frankly boring) hand dimensioning work.

 

[Robert LaPlaca]

Yeah, even the half of one board I've done so far has left me pretty sore! Plus all the grinding, sharpening, and honing of the plane blades (many looked like they hadn't been sharpened in 50 years or more) has done a number on my arms.

Thanks for all the helpful advice! My first project is going to be a 32"x48" box that will be the start of a hand tool cabinet. The width I can get out of my boards will determine the depth of the box, but it will probably end up being around 9" deep. 1 1/4" is probably a little too thick for the sides of a cabinet, so I'm planning on ripping it down to around 5/8". I may end up doing the resawing first, or after I get the first face roughly flat, as the resaw should be fairly flat (although a little uneven from the low-TPI blade I'll be using). I know that these kinds of boxes are typically made with birch plywood for dimensional stability and ease of construction, but I don't have any way to get plywood home from the store, so I'm using what I have. I'm still deciding on how I'm going to construct the back of the cabinet, as it will have to be a wide, thin board (something like 1/2"x32"x48") so I'll have to join multiple boards together. I figure I could to either a butt joint, half lap, tongue & groove, or something else. Half lap and tongue & groove wouldn't be as hard as it seems since I have a Stanley 45 combination plane and the appropriate cutters, and alternately a Stanley 78 rabbet plane, although the latter doesn't have a fence or depth stop. I may end up making the back panel first so I can make it as wide as possible, (I can make a 36" panel with four boards 9" - 9 1/4" in width) then dimension the sides to match that. If I want to keep the same 3:2 ratio as the original 32"x48" plans, then a 36" width will require a 54" length.

Any suggestions on how to put the 8" camber on the fore plane? Should I just go at it by hand with a diamond stone? I tried to take the corners off on my jointer plane because it was leaving tracks, but honestly it just seems like I put some bad scratches on my diamond stone and blunted the edges of the blade so now it cuts in even worse. I've been using the "ruler under the blade" Rob Cosman trick to flatten the back of my plane blades, and I was thinking maybe I could use a similar trick to get the edges radiused. I'm not sure, though.

It's a lot to consider, but as it's so difficult to dimension these boards by hand, I really want to make sure I have a solid plan in place before I go at it. I'd be bummed if I ended up spending hours dimensioning some lumber that I ended up ruining with a bad cut, or not using due to plans changing.

Daniel,

Are you talking about resawing by hand? Not saying it cannot be done, but many a hand tool only woodworker has a powered bandsaw in their arsenal to perform the resaw. From your 6/4 stock, I would say you may get two 1/2” thick net (5/8” on outside) pieces from the stock, assuming the stock is well behaved. I resaw 6/4 stock on my bandsaw all the time for drawer bottoms, back stock and drawer sides. Resawing can be rewarding or a frustrating, the resaw will release tension in the board, sometimes a lot of tension and it’s junk. For backs, shiplap works good, tongue and groove and finally my favorite tongue and grove with a bead.

For the 8” camber, I ground it on a belt grinder I have with a ceramic belt that Kingspor sells for metal work, although a traditional grinder should work fine, the suggestion of doing it by hand might not be so onerous with traditional tool steel, I was dealing with A2. The camber you need on the #7 or #4 can be achieved on a sharping stone, by just applying pressure at the edges as you sharpen, just want to ease the edges.

I have to confess, I have never used a Stanley #45, it should work, but will allow folks more familiar with the tool to give guidance..

Good luck

 

[Rwe2156]

Milling lumber by hand is a very laborious, time consuming task, but there is a certain reward in it. But I can tell you from experience, it got old real quick for me. Jointing you can do by hand, thicknessing is where the real work comes in so you might look into a low level lunchbox planer.

Basically the process is:

1. make one side flat enough not to rock on the bench.
2. flatten the top side, checking with winding stick and a straight edge
3. scribe a line around all 4 edges for thickness
4. remove material from the other side down to the line

There several places dedicated to "neanderthal" woodworking such as Renaissance Woodworker, Wood by Wright, Unplugged Woodshop, etc. Cosman also has a good video on this.

You need a good workbench, that's where to start. Actually you'll need a couple good sawhorses first.


A word of advice: don't go crazy buying tools you "think you need" beyond the basics, which is sounds like you've already got.

 

[jfynyson]

DrBob's post reminded me.... I learned from the "Renaissance Woodworker" on YouTube that you do not really have to get the entire surfaces perfectly flat everywhere except where some sort of joinery comes into play and the nearby area where you need to reference to mark your joinery properly. This is is the way a lot of furniture from 100+yrs ago was made.

 

[marinosr]

This popped up on lost art press blog today...

https://blog.lostartpress.com/2022/04/26/flattening-panels-with-planes/

I've done a number of projects hand tools only, mostly smaller ones and out of necessity... Until last year I didn't own a jointer or planer. Everybody here has covered the relevant tips, the most important of which are to rough dimension your pieces first and not worry about non-show surfaces. Just adding my voice that it is quite feasible and enjoyable if you work smart and aren't building something huge.

Resaw is tiring but actually not very difficult with a large ryoba, if you keep flipping the board constantly. But it is SO DEPRESSING if you finish a big resaw and you find you made a big divot in the middle of your board.

 

[Craptastic]

But it is SO DEPRESSING if you finish a big resaw and you find you made a big divot in the middle of your board.

Amen. That or you get done with a long beautiful board and the grain springs it on you. Oh you beautiful pretty looking warped board.