Reply To: My Workbench Project Blog
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I will return to the massive boards either this week-end or next week. Tonight, I have planed the boards for the rails between the legs. Four are ready to be cut to width, two to go. I noticed a big difference between cheap spruce and good pine, these boards are pine. While naturally harder to plane, it is much easier to get a good surface, and tearout, when it happens, is much lighter. I would love to do the complete bench in pine, but that would be three times the cost. I only know local prices, but I often heard, that in Europe, wood is the most expensive in Germany.
Tomorrow, I will continue planing the slabs for the second half of the bench top, and I will take a few pictures, so you can see, what I am getting done.
I have put aside the second plane body, it is not important right now. But I will try the old blade again, it looks quite nice now, and it will let me work longer between sharpening.
While planing the rail boards, I found a new strategy for flattening: I keep the plane fairly shallow all the time and look for the areas, where it takes off the most (or anything at all, on a fresh surface). Then I register the heel of the plane with a lower area and try to expand the higher area over the length of the board. Eventually, the shavings will get thinner, and then I look for the next high area. Registering against a lower area seems to minimise the amount, I need to take off on the high areas in order to reach the full board. On these four boards, I did today, it was almost enough to get the entire surfaces flat.
Dieter
PS:
Looking back to my planing history, I needed to take these steps in the following order:
– sharp plane iron
– good measuring equipment and methods (straight edge, light, winding sticks)
– sharper plane iron
– more attention to measuring my progress
– understanding grain
In my entire woodworking history, planing seems to be the hardest skill to develop. And therefore, I love this project, it consists of 90% planing and I am learning so much!