Day 58, My Rigid Thickness Planer
If you try to go beyond simple woodworking, the ability to mill wood into specific sizes and thicknesses becomes more and more important. In the old days, this would have been the arduous work of hours of hand work with a variety of hand planes. You'd begin by using a jack or scrub plane to roughly get rid of any high spots, often diagonally across the grain. You'd then switch to a longer "jointer" plane, working along the grain to flatten it. You'd then use a pair of winding sticks to make sure that you didn't have any twist, where you'd remove the high corners until the board is flat and straight.
You'd then shift to an adjacent side and repeat the process. You'd then use a square to make sure that the two faces you've flattened are not just flat, but also at right angles to each other.
You'd then use a marking gauge against the reference faces to mark the appropriate width or thickness, and plane down to your marks.
Then you'd have a piece of wood that was square and true.
And, you'd likely be exhausted, although the physical effort would be sufficient to drive thinking about politics from your mind.
The modern replacement for all this work and skill is a planer. This is one of the tools that I actually bought new. It's a model manufactured by Rigid, which was moderately priced as new tools go. It works pretty well, although it does have one fault which I dont' like: it is really hard to read the thickness markings on the front, which are effectively black on black. I find myself measuring thicknesses with a dial caliper if I am trying to hit a specific thickness.
But when combined with a jointer, you can fairly rapidly dimension lumber, which can be quite helpful.
It's sitting on a rolling stand that I built, and which works pretty well. Given that the planer weighs a fair amount (80 pounds?), having it on a rolling stand is quite useful.
Thank God it's Friday, and hope you all have a good weekend.