Shaker Sconce - Preparing the Stock

Since I purchase my wood directly from a sawmill, it is only roughly finished at best and needs a considerable amount of preparation before I can begin to lay out the actual pieces of my project. Even finished wood from a lumber yard is likely to be too warped, cupped or twisted to be used as-is for furniture or cabinetry. Finishing the lumber myself also allows me to mill it to the exact dimensions I want rather than being stuck with what is commercially available, and it saves me a lot of money.

Face Jointing With the Jointer

I begin by establishing one flat face on the board using the jointer. You can think of the jointer as a giant motorized version of the hand plane. Instead of moving the tool across the wood, as with the plane, the wood is moved across the tool. That would be from right to left in the photo.

The wings on either side of the machine are perfectly flat cast-iron tables. In the center, under the red guard, is a set of cutters rotating at high speed. These are capable of flattening up to a six inch width in one pass, leaving a finished surface. I can control the amount of material taken off in a single pass by raising or lowering the right-hand table.

When planing wood, it is important to keep track of the grain. As with petting a cat, you can run into trouble if you plane wood in the wrong direction! I have drawn in the grain with a sharpie on the edge of the board in the photo to show the proper orientation. If I were to plane the wood so that the grain angled up and to the right, it would tear rather than cut, leaving a rough surface.

The Planer

Having established one flat face on the board, I use the planer to create a second flat face parallel to the first. The planer also has a set of rotating cutters inside, here located above the wood rather than in the bed of the machine. Where I had to push the wood across the jointer by hand, the wood is pulled through the planer under power by means of rubber rollers. I can control the thickness of the finished board by raising or lowering the cutters.

The jointer will create one flat surface on a board but cannot produce a second face parallel to the first. The planer is great at producing parallel surfaces and controlled thicknesses but is not very good at removing warps and twists. Both machines are definitely required.

Edge Jointing With the Jointer

With two flat and parallel surfaces, I move back to the jointer to create one edge at right angles to the faces. The cast iron fence of the jointer, more visible in the first photo of the machine than here, is set at right angles to the bed to guide the wood as I pass it over the cutters. Again, grain direction is very important.

The long bed of the jointer bridges any low spots in the edge so only the high spots are removed by the cutters. I take multiple passes with the jointer, stopping when I hear that the machine is cutting along the entire length of the board. I now have a perfectly flat edge at right angles to the faces of the board.

Ripping With The Table Saw

I use the table saw to produce the final finished edge on the board. I adjust the distance between the blade and the rip fence, the black and white straightedge along the top of the photo, so that a small amount of wood is removed from the entire length of the board. I now have a a board with a perfectly rectangular cross-section.

This description makes the process sound much more complex and time-consuming than it actually is. In real time, it took no more than ten minutes for the entire procedure, not counting the time spent cleaning up afterwards. The finished board may be square, but it is still too thick to be used for this particular project. In the next installment, I will show how I resaw the wood to the proper thickness using the bandsaw.