What do you need to do to your dimensioned wood to prepare it for joinery? Often there are undulations or machine marks in the surface of the wood, or movement after dimensioning that needs removing before joinery layout occurs. Let’s work on getting the silky smooth surface and square faces that make for crisp, accurate joinery.
In the videos below, Paul Sellers guides us through the process of preparing stock for use in future projects.
There are a number of things to consider when selecting the materials such as checking for surface defects, cups, hollows and twist in the boards. With the stock for the table top selected, Paul shows how he goes about flattening the surface using the scrub plane and winding sticks.
Starting out with rough or oversized stock which you want to prepare using only hand tools? Paul shows how to use of the scrub plane and winding sticks to get your rough stock ready for your project.
Cup? Twist? Bow? These are things that happen to boards when they dry. There is nothing wrong with boards that have these traits but it is necessary to get rid of them before you start working them into projects.
Making wood square and straight may be something we take for granted when we can buy machined stock. However, it is really useful to know how you can do it by hand. In this video Paul shows you how to plane ‘four-square’.