Planing Wet Wood

[jpcarpenter]

I was wondering if planing wet wood is bad for the planer. I want to plane it so that it will dry faster.

[Beechwood Chip]

It'll probably move as it dries, so I wouldn't plane it to final dimension. Cutting it to your rough dimension should speed drying, then after it's dry you can joint and plane to your final dimension.

I've heard "one year per inch of thickness" is a good rule of thumb, so if you can resaw 8/4 down to 4/4 (minus saw kerf), you can half your drying time.

[Nick2cd]

i don't think it'll hurt the planer at all. however, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to wipe the knives down after you finish. i agree with beech though....it will definitely lessen your drying time, but it's definitely gonna move on ya from here. i would leave a hefty bit of extra wood from your final dimension just to be safe. be sure to paint the ends of your rough stock to avoid checking.

[jwatson]

i've planed down wood i have gotten from a home center and they get wood that is often wet and it doesnt harm the machine. its not like you are planing a sponge.

[markhochstein]

How wet are we talking? If it's green, then planing it is fine, but it won't really speed the drying unless you are really reducing the thickness - then you have to worry about it moving and not having enough left after you joint it and plane it again.

If I have a really curly board I will often wet the board thoroughly and then wipe it off before I plane a 1/64th or less off of it. That significantly reduces the tear-out. By the time I put the board aside, the blades are dry. Spinning as fast as they are they're dry almost instantly. I would be more concerned with your dust collector than your planer. Those wet shavings and dust can really get lodged into places in your dust collection equipment. If you're going to plane wet wood, make sure you empty the DC and clean it throughly afterwards.

[duckkisser]

you can probably cut it but i had a wood worker tell me that wood never stops being alive. what he ment was that as wood ages it will expand and shrink with the seasons. and green wood is still settling down to a stable form. if your talking about just being wet remember that wet sawdust sticks to everything and can clog you machine i had a kid stick a wet board in our planer and i made him take a tooth brush and some thin sticks to get it all unstuck. then for good measure i ran our blades through a sharpener to be safe.

[rmason]

It won't hurt your planer but I think it would be a waste of time. I don't believe planing it will help it dry faster and you will have to plane again anyway to size it when it is dry. Really no point in planing it before you can use it.

[Guest Mark]

I have planed old, wet redwood planks, with some surface rot and, although the redwood comes out looking as new after about 1/16th” has been removed from both surfaces, there are two problems:

1) the wet wood chips are sticky and tend to clog up the planer bed, stop the wood chips being ejected normally, and fill up every void in the planet, making cleaning it a difficult job

2) more seriously, the wet wood makes the planer bed sticky and leaves a residue on it that hugely increases the friction between the wood and the bed. The wet wood surface and the huge amount of wet chips on and around the planer bed cause the rollers to lose friction and pick up wood chips on the roller surface. This, along with the sticky planer bed cause major problems with feeding the wood through the planer after a while.

Although the planer blades (helical) and the planer were not damaged, I had to give up after about planing about five 16’ lengths.

i ended up pressure washing both sides of the boards to get rid of the surface rot, leaving them in the sun for a day or two to get dry, and then planing them. MUCH better results!