Planing

Also called: truing, flattening, trueing up, facing

Planing is the shaving of wood with a plane to flatten a surface, bring it to size, or smooth it, and it is probably the task carried out most often at a workbench.

The basic work

A jointer plane, a long plane used for truing flat surfaces, is worked on a face until the wanted surface quality is reached. Timber can be thinned by planing its two opposite faces so that they run parallel to each other along the full length of the piece, and it can help to plane both ends of a piece to length before planing it to width, since this sequence keeps enough waste material in hand to work with. On a narrow surface, letting the fingers extend below the plane and press against the side of the board helps guide the cut straight, and the plane should be lifted clear before its cutter runs off the far edge of the work, rather than left to ride off it. When truing an edge with a hand plane, the pressure of the hand starts even along the stroke and shifts fully onto the right hand by the end of it. A bench end stop is used for planing in the same way it is used for any other bench work, and clamps can hold thin, bandsawn veneer, wood cut into thin sheets, in place with small brass nails so it can be planed after cutting.

Where it goes wrong

Planing across end grain, the surface left where the wood is cut across its fibres, causes difficulty for anyone without experience, and for this cut the blade is normally set wider than the cut it makes. Planing against the grain can raise tiny tear-outs, small torn patches that ruin the smoothness of the surface, and planing damp, high-moisture wood can leave a fuzzy, woolly surface, especially where the blade's rake angle, the angle it is tilted at in the plane, is low. Beginners attempting to plane a flat surface often end up with a rounded, high-centred result instead of a true flat one.

A different tradition

Sawing and planing can both be carried out on saw horses or on a dedicated planing bench. One Japanese planing tradition works quite differently from the Western bench style just described: the worker sits on a cushion, gripping a planing board, a board the workpiece rests against, between an extended leg and the other foot and knee, on a work surface set at roughly hip height to suit the stance. Power for the cut is drawn mainly from the legs and torso, with the shoulders finishing the stroke, and producing one unbroken, full-length shaving as wide as the cutter itself is regarded as the mark of top skill in this tradition. Planing boards used this way vary: one craftsman uses a separate oak board for shorter, delicate pieces, keeps his board level because he also uses it as a mortising surface, and occasionally sets one crosspiece higher than the other for better leverage.