Out of Wind
Flatten rough boards with hand planes, and stop before they’re too thin for the tabletop.
Flatten rough boards with hand planes, and stop before they’re too thin for the tabletop.
No. 1
FAS
Every board flat and out of wind
Swipe along the board to take a stroke. The blade cuts under your finger, pushing away or pulling toward you. Dragging back lifts the iron. Go end to end: a stroke put down near one end starts from it, and one lifted near the other runs off it. A stroke counts when it takes a shaving; one that cuts nothing is free, and the bench says why.
A plane only cuts where the wood stands high under its sole. The jointer is long, so it rides over hollows and takes the high spots down until the face is true. The smoother is short and follows the face. The jack’s curved edge takes deep scoops off the high spots fast.
Work across the board. A plane can’t cut deeper than the wood either side of its blade, so take it lane by lane, and let it hang off the edge to reach the last strip.
Pencil. Scribble across the face, then plane. The pencil goes first from the high spots, and where it’s left, the plane didn’t reach. A clean face only means the plane cut everywhere, which it will on a crowned or twisted face too: check it with the straightedge and the winding sticks.
Straightedge. Drag along or across the board to lay it down. Light shows under it wherever the face dips away, and the note says what it sees. Light in the middle is a hollow; if it rocks on a spot, that spot stands high. Plane where it touches, and stop where the light starts.
Winding sticks. Two sticks across the ends. Sighting down them shows twist; when they line up, the face is out of wind. Twist is two opposite corners standing high, and long straight strokes take an even shaving off it without changing it: plane the high corners, with short strokes or from one high corner diagonally to the other.
A crown (high in the middle) is the same: a plane follows it down, so take short strokes on the high part until the straightedge stops rocking.
When strokes stop helping, the bench says what shape is left and where the face stands highest. Nearly flat, it says where after every stroke: a stroke there with the smoother.
Read the grain on the edge. The strip along the face is the board’s edge, and the lines in it are the fibres running out to the face. Follow one from the face into the wood: the way it heads is the way to plane, like stroking a cat. Go the other way and the grain tears out; a finely set smoother gets away with it.
The gauge line. The dashed line in the side view is three-quarters of an inch up from the underside. Go through it anywhere and the board’s too thin for the tabletop.
On a keyboard, 1, 2 and 3 pick the jack, jointer and smoother; P scribbles pencil, E lays the straightedge and W sets the winding sticks.
Grading. A board is done when it’s flat and planed all over. Then it gets a mark each for keeping its thickness (the card before each board says how thick), no tear-out, and strokes within par. All of them is FAS, the top grade of lumber; then Select, No. 1 Common and No. 2 Common. The top bar keeps count as you go: strokes against par, how far from flat the face is and what flat is, the thinnest spot against the thickness you’re keeping, and spots of tear-out. A number turns amber when its mark is gone.