On 20 Jan 2005 13:40:37 -0800, "
wrote:

I am buying alot of quartersawn white oak in the rough and I had a
question. I need to mill it in my Delta 12" planner but since both the
top and bottom are rough is there a proper way to ensure I have a flat
board when I finish milling it.

Just shove it through the planer, keep turning the boards over, don't
use excessive pressure and watch your technique.

A thickness planer will make flat smooth boards for you - you don't
need a wide jointer. The only ones it will have trouble with are
twisted boards, but then you probably don't want to be using these
anyway (if it's quartersawn and twisted, something bad went wrong
somewhere). It's usually best to either scrap such a board, or saw it
down to extract the stable portion before planing.

If you're careful, you can take cupping out perfectly well by a
thickness planer. Just don't crank the pressure on, or you distort it
more than you machine it. If it's badly cupped, you may get better
timber utilisation as two narrow boards, rather than planing all the
thickness out to remove the cup.

A wide jointer is great if you have it, bit you _can_ do this without.

To save a lot of time, use a hand-held powered planer to knock down
the high points of a cupped board (or a scrub). This is the only use I
have for a powered planer.

--
Smert' spamionam