Hey all,

I'm a hobbiest woodworking from the south shore who has been dabbling for about 10 years now, making the odd shelf, cutting board, chest, cabinet, humidor, etc... Up until this point, my projects have been fairly small, or at least comprised of small parts. I do most of my work with power tools, though I do have some hand tools I use from time to time (gotta love that little block plane!) I have a 13 inch planer, and an 8 inch jointer. Suffice it to say, I've never had to flatten anything very large until now, nothing that wouldn't fit my power tools. I just re-did my kitchen, built a beautiful walnut shelf for it, but also want to replace the old mantel in there with a walnut one to match the shelf. I bought a beautiful piece of 3 (12/4) in. x ~12 in. x 8ft walnut that I've managed to re-saw down close to the dimensions I need but I'm having a terrible time flattening it with the #7 jointer plane I bought off EBay. I've watched many videos on flattening large slabs, I made winding sticks, I rebuilt the jointer plane ensuring the blade is perfectly square and ensured the bottom of the plane is flat. No matter what I do I cant seem to get this thing flat. When I plane across the width of the board, it never leaves it flat. There is always a hump in the middle or the side closest to me is lower than the rest of the width. Im a bit overwhelmed honestly.

So I come here asking for guidance. At the end of the day, I need to flatten and square up a huge walnut board for the mantel but I don't have the power tools to fit it or the skills to do it with hand tools. I'm guessing something is wrong with my technique or my jointer plane is out of whack and I'm not realizing it.

Any guidance would help!

Just for fun: I've attached some pictures of the shelf the mantel is going to match :)

Cheers,
Rob

I had a similar issue with some air dried walnut slabs so I built the attached sled to flatten them. Since my hand planing skills weren't up to flattening the slabs, the sled was a successful alternative. Since you have a planer you can do one of the following options.

1. Build a similar sled

2. Use a flat board, some wedges and hot glue or tape to flatten one side on your 13" planer

3. Come over to my house to use my sled and my 20" planer

Let me know if you need further assistance on this?

Thanks all for advice, this is super helpful. I'm going to try to hand plane it again applying the correct pressure and if that doesn't yield good results I'll resort to a flattening jig. My finished length needs to be about 8 ft which makes using my planer really difficult. The piece is really really heavy and without at least 2 guys the board is hard to manage through the machine.

I'll bet there are a few guild members who would be willing to lend hands if you decide to wrestle that long board through your planer. I've had success with a couple of roller stands on the infeed and outfeed sides. 

The Guild is good at providing hands-on help, and it's a good way to meet people.