Steve,

Now THAT'S a finely detailed description of when and with what to clean
up a board. Thanks for the succinctly written explanation of what you
use, and the reasons for bothering to plane a jointed surface. You have
explained this for me in practical terms that I relate to.

To summarize: well tuned, sharp bladed jointer, run at optimum pace,
provides a perfect edge ready for glue-up. Dull blades, less than
stellar technique requires a bit of touch-up.

How am I doing?

dave

Steve Wilson wrote:

Dave,

I will often take a plane to clean up the edge after I've run a board
through on my jointer (PM 60). When the knives on my jointer are
fresh and recently set, the surface left by the jointer is very, very
good and runing a hand plane over the surface does little to improve
things. However, as the knives wear a bit, maybe develop a nick or
two, develop a slight crown or hollow (were talking maybe .002"), or
if I run a board over the jointer too fast, using a hand plane will
improve things a bunch. So now I use a plane to clean up edge joints
all the time. Do you need a long plane (i.e. #6, #7, #8) to do this?
No, because the edge is square to a face and straight. The plane,
finely tuned, is just there to take off a whisper thin shaving to
clean up slight imperfections in the surface. Now, sometimes the
edge, generally due to a technique screw up on my part, needs a little
more work. Then I make sure I pull out a jointer. What plane do I
usually use? I have two #7's (a new Clifton and an Type 11
Stanley/Bailey) in my arsenal and I have the Type 11 tuned to take a
very thin shaving (IIRC .0015") and I leave a 386 jointer fence
attached to it always. So, when I clean up a jointed edge before a
glue up, or to fix a bonehead error, I just reach for my Bailey #7
w/386 fence and pass it down the edge. That way I'm consistent and the
edge always comes out great. But in reality, if the edge is straight
and square then any finely set plane will work for cleaning up slight
machine marks (generally scallops)