Reply To: Problems bringing pieces to thickness
This may not be your issue, but I wanted to add that if, in following Collin’s advice, you encounter strange planing behaviour where the plane will skip over identified highspots, and take a shaving on low spots, the board might be twisted.
Checking for twist, even on the opposite side of the face, is valuable, because a twisted board is deeply unintuitive to read.
Several times, i’ve sighted a board, and checked with a straightedge, only to have the plane make the low spots lower, and the high spots highler.
Most of those times, it was because twist made me misread where the high spots actually were.
I’ve come to see winding sticks not as optional for stock preparation, like a straight edge is, but as completely essential.
Unlike the square, the winding sticks don’t have to be perfect in my experience. They just need to get you get you close enough that the readings from your other tools make sense.
Might not be your issue at all, but worth keeping in mind.
If you keep running into trouble, stay patient with yourself. Maybe practise stock prep, not for a particular project, but just to practise stock prep.
EDIT:
I’ve also found that using long planes have more of a tendency to ride over a big high spot than shorter planes.
It’s easy to just skit the the sole over them, keeping the iron in the air. Using a shorter plane, or skewing the plane, helps this.
