I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking the
twist out of a 9/4 walnut board, 8" wide and 5' long, without having a
jointer big enough or using winding sticks and hand planes.
Obviously, the task is to get one side of the board flat, and then go
from there to get parallel sides.

A guy told me about this machine from the old days in a shop where he
worked as a kid.

A "Flattener". It's like a surface planer, with the cutter head on the
bottom. The top of the board if held gently by bed of "nails" that
sorta hangs down and holds the board so it can't tip as it goes through
the machine. The nails are held in some sort of sliding (upside down)
"sled" that feeds the board through.

Has anyone here ever seen one or know where there's a picture of one?

I googled "what is a board flattener?" and got some responses that
suggested making a sled for a regular surface planer, using various
techniques to hold the board still for a few light passes, until the
upper surface of the board is more or less flat.


Pete Stanaitis
-----------------------

"spaco" wrote:

I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking
the twist out of a 9/4 walnut board, 8" wide and 5' long, without
having a jointer big enough or using winding sticks and hand planes.
Obviously, the task is to get one side of the board flat, and then
go from there to get parallel sides.
snip

Can't help you with the "Flattener", but based on the size and weight
of the piece, think I would head to the commercial drum sanding shop
rather than trying to use a bench thickness planer.

A few passes removing a short 1/32" per pass and you should start to
see how much of a problem you face getting flat surfaces.

Lew

"spaco" wrote in message
.. .
I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking the
twist out of a 9/4 walnut board, 8" wide and 5' long, without having a
jointer big enough or using winding sticks and hand planes.
Obviously, the task is to get one side of the board flat, and then go
from there to get parallel sides.


Not sure what is meant by a flattener, but the first question I have is do
you need to work with the board that large? If not, reducing it to roughly
the dimensions you need on a bandsaw might solve your jointer width problem.

Alternatively, make a sled for the planner... If this is going to be a
regular task and you are into it, make a fancy one with side clamps, jack
screws, etc. If it's a one-shot-deal use a board with at least one flat
side, or a piece of plywood, that can be run against he planner bed. Place
the walnut board on it, and then shim the walnut to hold it so it doesn't
rock. The shims can be held with hot glue to even a dab of carpenter's glue.
Run the top side through the planner until it's flat, remove from sled,
plane the other side.

John

spaco wrote:
I guess I could do something similar with my 3 X 24 belt sander, but
won't that process leave abrasive grains in the wood that could dull my
planer knives later?

Not so's you'll notice assuming you do at least a modicum of cleanup...

If I did it anyway, wouldn't I need some way to hold the board
immobile, propped up on the twist?

Yes.

I did some googling and found a site where they talked about various
kinds of "sleds" that you would lay the board on and then just take
light cuts till the board got flat on one side, sorta like an upside
down jointer.

I know this isn't a "productive" reply to your suggestion, but I'm
looking for a way to do it myself. I have saved up 5000 or 10000 bf of
various species of rough sawn lumber since about 1980, and I'd like to
be able to go to the woodshed, pick out a piece for a project and then
process it right here at home.
My planer is a simple floor mounted 15" job from Taiwan. It weighs
about 500 pounds.
....

So, use the planer and the sled concept. Done. That's what you have
the planer for, isn't it????

--

On Apr 11, 12:20*am, spaco wrote:
I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
* *We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking the
twist out of a 9/4 walnut board, 8" wide and 5' long, without having a
jointer big enough or using winding sticks and hand planes.
* *Obviously, the task is to get one side of the board flat, and then go
from there to get parallel sides.

A guy told me about this machine from the old days in a shop where he
worked as a kid.

A "Flattener". *It's like a surface planer, with the cutter head on the
bottom. *The top of the board if held gently *by *bed of "nails" that
sorta hangs down *and holds the board so it can't tip as it goes through
the machine. The nails are held in some sort of sliding (upside down)
"sled" that feeds the board through.

Has anyone here ever seen one or know where there's a picture of one?

I googled "what is a board flattener?" and got some responses that
suggested making a sled for a regular surface planer, using various
techniques to hold the board still for a few light passes, until the
upper surface of the board is more or less flat.

Pete Stanaitis
-----------------------

Look at www.americanwidget.com/flatboarder.htm

This is the same company that made the first Hardwood Stretcher in
1928, I believe.

I clicked on the link below, and it went to that page, but I couldn't
find anything there that relate to this issue. What should I have done?

Pete Stanaitis
---------------------

Hoosierpopi wrote:
On Apr 11, 12:20 am, spaco wrote:

I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking the
twist out of a 9/4 walnut board, 8" wide and 5' long, without having a
jointer big enough or using winding sticks and hand planes.
Obviously, the task is to get one side of the board flat, and then go
from there to get parallel sides.

A guy told me about this machine from the old days in a shop where he
worked as a kid.

A "Flattener". It's like a surface planer, with the cutter head on the
bottom. The top of the board if held gently by bed of "nails" that
sorta hangs down and holds the board so it can't tip as it goes through
the machine. The nails are held in some sort of sliding (upside down)
"sled" that feeds the board through.

Has anyone here ever seen one or know where there's a picture of one?

I googled "what is a board flattener?" and got some responses that
suggested making a sled for a regular surface planer, using various
techniques to hold the board still for a few light passes, until the
upper surface of the board is more or less flat.

Pete Stanaitis
-----------------------


Look at www.americanwidget.com/flatboarder.htm

This is the same company that made the first Hardwood Stretcher in
1928, I believe.

Thank you.
Yes, I do need to work with the board that wide.
I don't think I will be doing this on a regular basis, but the sled idea
sounds like the way to go anyway. I have a lot of rough sawn hardwood
around here, so the sled might get more use once I have it.

Pete Stanaitis
-----------------

John Grossbohlin wrote:


"spaco" wrote in message
.. .

I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking the
twist out of a 9/4 walnut board, 8" wide and 5' long, without having a
jointer big enough or using winding sticks and hand planes.
Obviously, the task is to get one side of the board flat, and then
go from there to get parallel sides.



Not sure what is meant by a flattener, but the first question I have is
do you need to work with the board that large? If not, reducing it to
roughly the dimensions you need on a bandsaw might solve your jointer
width problem.

Alternatively, make a sled for the planner... If this is going to be a
regular task and you are into it, make a fancy one with side clamps,
jack screws, etc. If it's a one-shot-deal use a board with at least one
flat side, or a piece of plywood, that can be run against he planner
bed. Place the walnut board on it, and then shim the walnut to hold it
so it doesn't rock. The shims can be held with hot glue to even a dab of
carpenter's glue. Run the top side through the planner until it's flat,
remove from sled, plane the other side.

John

spaco wrote:
....

I don't think I will be doing this on a regular basis, but the sled idea
sounds like the way to go anyway. I have a lot of rough sawn hardwood
around here, so the sled might get more use once I have it.
....

[Trimming and not top-posting would surely be nice for thread continuity
and ease of conversation...]

Indeed sleds are wonderful devices but...

For the initial "knock it down to flat" work, simply tacking wedges or a
strategically placed cutoff of the proper thickness to stop the rocking
is another "trick" I use quite a lot.

All you really need is enough to get it through on a single plane a
couple of times. If there is twist and it's long, bringing it down to
several shorter sections based on the project size first is generally
worthwhile to both make the process simpler and to also save as much
material as feasible.

Also, severely cupped or bowed pieces may be far more effectively
utilized by ripping and regluing than trying to flatten the entire board
-- the wider it is, the more likely this is to be beneficial.

What you have to avoid, of course, is the feed roller pressure
flattening the piece as it goes through and then it returning to its
original shape after passing thru albeit w/ parallel (but not straight)
surfaces. This is obviously less of an issue as one gets to thicker and
thicker original stock; 8/4 hardwoods one may manage to use minimal
pressure necessary to feed and only deal w/ the rocking issue and do
quite nicely whereas 4/4 of the same material will need full support.

Experience is the best teacher--nothing ventured, nothing gained...

--

On Apr 10, 9:20*pm, spaco wrote:
I just heard of a woodworking machine called a "Flattener" today.
* *We were at a birthday party and I asked for advice about taking the


Was this a troll and everyone is playing along or have I entered the
twilight zone where the concept and reason for of a Jointer has
vanished?

A sander and a planer won't remove twist because they force the board
flat druing operation with their feed systems and then you gat a
smooth twisted board after it exists the feed rollers.

Sounds like this guy talking about a flattener with some nail bed
holder thing is smoking some pretty good sawdust.

SonomaProducts.com wrote:
....

Was this a troll and everyone is playing along or have I entered the
twilight zone where the concept and reason for of a Jointer has
vanished?
....

You got a 15" jointer, Sonoma????

The sled concept works w/ either a planer or thickness sander; I believe
there have been what OP asked about but never became very popular; if
I'm not mistaken they are a "surfacing planer".

Places I was aware of in VA/NC (like the Lane factory in Alta Vista, VA)
used two-sided planers to prepare their rough stock and get a parallel
faces before final thicknessing...

http://www.mlsmachinery.com/onlineCatalog/catalog.asp?cat=1420

/Geezeralert
My current planer, a Delta Model 13, the little but mighty precursor to
the lunchbox altho it weighs 250 lbs came from a small manufacturer in
PA when they upgraded 30+ years ago--at the time they had nine separate
lines of five of them in a row each at a fixed thickness and a pair
operated each, one feeding and another passing the output to the next in
the line at the end of which was the desired thickness. They ensured
stock was "flat enough" from the mill.
Geezeralert/

--

.. *They ensured
stock was "flat enough" from the mill.
Geezeralert/

--
The OP was asking about an 8" wide board but I was reading kind of
fast anyway. Not sure how this sled concept works with a planer and
not really fully up to speed what all industrial equip is used in
mills.

SonomaProducts.com wrote:
. They ensured
stock was "flat enough" from the mill.
Geezeralert/

--
The OP was asking about an 8" wide board but I was reading kind of
fast anyway. Not sure how this sled concept works with a planer and
not really fully up to speed what all industrial equip is used in
mills.

I wasn't paying any attention to the actual width, only that he said in
the original post "...without having a jointer big enough..." so it
doesn't really matter how wide it actually is.

The sled is simply a support against which to place shims appropriately
to support a cup or twist so can keep the roller pressure from either
flattening or rocking on the initial pass or so. Once have that as a
starting point on the first side, then can dispense w/ it and turn over
and proceed...

Mucho fancy stuff (read $$$ ).

--

I am the original poster. I don't consider myself a troll. Just because
you don't know about this machine doesn't make it non existant.
In researching my request, I came upon a forum (which I unfortunately
didn't bookmark that discussed the problem. One poster said that he had
made a sled to emulate the flatter with a planer. He used flat head
screws on the sled board, just as my acquaintance had talked of "nails"
on the top with the planer knives below.

I live in rural western Wisconsin. There are and have been dozens of
small sawmills and wood working factories in the area since the late
1800's. I have seen and heard of many shop-made machines that weren't
necessarily available to troll sensors.

If you have a problem with something I said, you should contact me.

Pete Stanaitis
---------------

SonomaProducts.com wrote:

snip
Was this a troll and everyone is playing along or have I entered the
twilight zone where the concept and reason for of a Jointer has
vanished?

snip

Sounds like this guy talking about a flattener with some nail bed
holder thing is smoking some pretty good sawdust.

I apologize for any offense. Non intended but obviously preceived. I
thought I knew it all. I guess I was wrong.