Got this for planning some 2 x 4s I'm making into a desk, it's an absolute weapon. Problem is, it takes TOO much off, now it's fricking uneven. Is there a way to stop this or should I just make a DIY sled for the router with a flush bit? I want to make it level.
In order of aggression.
Planer --> belt sander --> orbital --> palm sander
Fine tune with the grits.
getting hand planes to make a flat surface isn't easy, the router sled is going to give you your best result, you can get something smooth with 's method, but smooth and flat are different words
right!
I usually knock the bumps down with the manual planners then just stand but it was WAY too aggressive and just takes too much off. Great tool though. I'm going to have to make a sled to get it completely flat.
>getting hand planes to make a flat surface isn't easy
t. moron who has 30 hours to do what can be done in one hour
Nta but UP is planing 2x4s which, in most places, require maybe 4-5 mil max off the highest spot to make them flat and then a light pass to make them smooth. That’s maybe a minute of work with a hand jack plane and smoothing plane.
> I want to make it level.
You mean you’re making a flat surface right? Easy method is glue them up first, upside down pressing down onto some flat surface while clamping. Then make the top flat (with belt sander or hand plane), and make the bottom side just smooth with a sander since no one will never notice that it’s not perfectly flat.
There aren’t really good options between hand plane and bench planer imo
>Nta but UP is planing 2x4s which, in most places, require maybe 4-5 mil max off the highest spot to make them flat and then a light pass to make them smooth. That’s maybe a minute of work with a hand jack plane and smoothing plane.
the problem is when you glue up/buiscuit the 2x4s together you have to flatten the surface afterwards, making a table top with a hand planer has certainly been done in the past, but it is a long and tedious process with varying results. a DIY router sled, while not perfect, will get you way flatter way faster.
>but it is a long and tedious process
you are a moron lol, you think a router sled materialises out of thin air?
>30 minutes of muscle work
vs
>5 hours building a jig for a one off
not advocating for op to go out and buy a plane but that is some serious shit advice
you're moronic and have never built anything above "it looks like a child did this" on the quality scale
>projecting
you can't flatten a table top in 30 minutes with a fricking 3" planer, there's a reason cabinet shops have 48" industrial machines for that, this is DIY, you don't have 3 phase, the router sled is your best option
kek you are making a fool out of yourself.
let me ask you a question. How shit are your laminations that you supposedly have to remove inches of material to establish a flat surface?
I regularly mix 2x6 with 2x4. It's the only way I can know I have enough before bringing the tabletop down to 1 3/16" thick.
Why are you so obsessed with this router sled? It screams of some sunk cost falacy.
Because idiots on this board don't understand flat vs smooth and when you do a glue up the boards never align perfectly and flattening would either require a two foot hand plane (hours and hours) or building a router sled or buying a router sled for a DIY level user, since 3 phase planers are probably not on the menu.
t. grew up in a cabinet shop and currently do finish carpentry to pay my bills
now i get you
you learned a trade and feel the need to mystify that shit, the hvac gay of wood so to say.
You know what we do to apprentice in my country? first thing they get is a file, a piece of U channel and the task to file it straight, square and parallel to 0.01mm without any shortcuts. It is by design diabolic, made to question their sanity and can take months for some. Makes them humble and rubs the smug out of their grin.
After that task, they will never ever think again
>ugh you cant do that without a cnc (replace for "neweset production method on the market" and its universal)
new Wood workers being too far detached from u channel used to get square pieces of wood, a smoother and the task to produce perfect round stock. straight, round, and front to back same diameter
i mean that part here shows your ignorance perfectly
>perfectly and flattening would either require a two foot hand plane (hours and hours)
if one would have to take of so much material, any sane person would grab a rougher set second plane and be done with the rough work in minutes
>It is by design diabolic, made to question their sanity and can take months for some. Makes them humble and rubs the smug out of their grin.
>After that task, they will never ever think again
>>ugh you cant do that without a cnc (replace for "neweset production method on the market" and its universal)
>new Wood workers being too far detached from u channel used to get square pieces of wood, a smoother and the task to produce perfect round stock. straight, round, and front to back same diameter
my whole fricking point is that doing it by hand takes longer than building a router sled (which you then have to use on future projects) and then using a tool you already have to achieve a good final product in a reasonable amount of time. All it takes is some dimensional lumber, the ability to cut a straight edge on it, a table and some screws. Your argument is that with infinite time you can achieve this result with what would normally be considered insufficient tools. And I really don't care if in your country men are taught sex by first having it with goats and sheep so they know what they are doing when the finally get to frick a woman.
my whole point is that you obviously talk out of your ass because you clearly never did it (the proper way), yet still go on an on how it would take an unrealistic amount of time.
Not that anon, but I've flattened a table top with a hand plane, a Stanley #6, I believe that makes it a foreplane technically, and only 18"? Took about half an hour. Not sure where you're getting hours and hours, maybe you were new when you did it last or something.
What's a router sled? I've done a fair share of carpentry. Only ever needed a thickness planer, a jointer and a table saw. Block plane and sander for finishing. Routers and stuffs for some intricate cutouts or chamfers, for sure, but not for making a table top flat.
>What's a router sled?
It's a jig which allows you to pass a router back and forth over a workpiece and basically use the router as a mill to flatten the surface at maybe 1/2" per pass. Takes a crazy long time if you're flattening a large surface like a table top.
Versus building a similar jig for a power planer and flatten the surface at 3" per pass. So the work is done many times faster.
>spends hundrets of dollars on the rails for muh precision instead of using 2x4s
>still looks like shit thanks to tiny cutter
and if there is the smallest amount of play or he uses an extension collar or alternates between conventional and climb cutting, those optical artifacts quickly become 2mm high steps (like on my buddys setup that he paid two grand for)
>if you frick it up and are dumb it doesn't work well
no shit
2x4s are easy but flattening anything wider than 8" is a pain tbh ne
why you think that?
Yeah?
I put like 80 grit on mr belt sander and Destroyed a panel I was “tweaking” to fit.
Also, do not start belt sander while pressing down on piece.
I find belt sanders so fast that you can do 150+ on them and the stock removal rate is still crazy, plus the surface finish is way better. Using 60-80 on them gets you all the inconsistency of hand sanding but removes so much material you can ruin a project instantly.
>now it's fricking uneven.
you know anon, just like with a handplane you need a strategy and have to continuously check if you want to end up with something precise.
An electric planer is a manual tool too you doofus
they make frames for the better belt sanders that prevent the dig in
I just went through this with some oak garden beds I made. I think your really need a planer and or jointer to do this right.
If you find a way to create nice level edges that stack against each other let me know.
These are way crazy. They're for like guys putting in doors or taking a huge twist out of a board.
This guy makes a bunch of cool jigs for them
I've often wondered why it is that people will make jigs for routers to plane a table top but won't make jigs for power planers which should be able to do the same job in a fraction of the time.
because someone did it and youtube/Instagram is a cesspit of copycats. And the flimsy extrusion xyz mechanic resembling a mill appeals to the engineering crowd, think of baby duck syndrome
>, think of baby duck syndrome
Per wikipedia: In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to "imprint" on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. The result is that "users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems".
LOOOL. boomer here, and the first system I learned required typing the code on a godforsaken keypunch and then you ran the cards and twenty minutes later the mainframe got around to your pathetic homework assignment and said you had a typo on line 3 so it stopped there. Not one day has passed in my entire life where I preferred that hell. Even funnier, some of the worn out keypunches in the computer lab didn't print what you typed on the top row of the card, so you were guaranteed to have a pile of typos, each one requiring that fricking twenty or thirty minutes to find. How the frick I survived that is beyond me.
> card readers in basement
> assignment due in 20 minutes
> drop deck in stairwell
Oh, the memories
it is definitely true
im a plc monkey and trained in Instruction list (il is an 80s child born out of lack of memory)
to this day everything else in my eyes is trash unfit for a simple flow control. the successor language easily quadruples our documentation workload
I've often wondered that too. My Milwaukee cordless power planer is one if my favorite tools.
OP you need a bench planer and maybe a joiner.
>desk
This is really more of a jobsite tool, where exact precision doesn't necessarily make or break.
Yeah, the knob at the front is a screw for adjusting depth of cut.
But like someone els said, you need to find the high spots and only hit those. As a rule of thumb, a plane will flatten something twice its length by itself. More than that, your skill is what matters.
Also, i find that electric planers have difficulties when not starting at the start of the material. You'd probably be better off with a bench plane, but you'd at the very least need a set of stones an a strop, and you'd be getting into a whole thing
>i find that electric planers have difficulties when not starting at the start of the material
because they are not setup like a plane but rather an upside down jointer with a set outfeed table.
without pressure on the knob it wont dive in,
> Problem is, it takes TOO much off
Do to see the knob in the front? Twisting that adjusts depth. You don’t need a router sled either.
You guys overcomplicate everything.
If you've never used this, the front knob at its very smallest setting take a bigger bite than any scrub plane, it's huge..
Glue a piece of wood on the front step and flatten it so a zero cut is actually a zero cut, then you could turn the know a little bit and get a cut you want
Lol no it doesn’t
The smallest setting will take nothing off.
The knob adjusts 0.1mm increments.