Rough to thickness with a scrub plane, smooth with a smoother, use gauges to
set thickness, use winding sticks to take out twist, maybe a cabinet scraper
for the final finish.

What I wonder is how people finish big table top glue-ups without all of the
above? I just finished a yellow pine table top, 36" wide by 76" long by
1.5" thick. I power planed and jointed to do the glue up, then did all of
the finishing using hand planes and scrapers. Since I only have a 6"
jointer and the boards were 12" wide, I couldn't use power tools to get the
faces parallel, and I have a fair bit of hand-planing to do to get everying
smooth, twist free and parallel. The top weighed over 100 pounds - I really
wanted a big sander at a few points!

Brian


"Dennis M. O'Connor" wrote in message
...
I'm curious:
Before the wonder of powered rotating blades,
how did woodworkers do the equivalent of
milling the face of a board with a jointer and
planing to a uniform thickness with a thickness planer ?

I've thunk and thunk till my thunker was sore,
and I just can't figure how you could do it.
But there must be a way, right ?

'Course, I'd just use the big power tools,
because I love using big power tools. :-)
--
Dennis M. O'Connor
But there's no woodworking function for
a skid-steer front-loader.