dustinsmith Posted September 17, 2012 Report Share Posted September 17, 2012 Hi gang, This weekend I finished planing my front and back slabs down to 4" thick. While laying out the cut lines on each end of the slabs with my combination square, I noticed the 4" face of each slab was curved (a very slight bow on both the front and back face of each slab). I'm worried this will come back to haunt me later if I don't fix it now, but my slabs are both already at the exact widths they need to be per plan (7 13/16" and 11 1/16"). If I joint one edge on my jointer, it will of course reduce the width of the slabs. Should I be worried about this? My concern is that if I I don't joint them flat, then I'll never be able to get the end cap dovetails to look good, since I won't be able to use the edge of the slab as a true perpendicular edge. Thoughts? Dustin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trip Posted September 17, 2012 Report Share Posted September 17, 2012 slight bow? so you loose a small amount? then go ahead and joint the edge -- way more important to be square... loosing a small amount of width is no big idea... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevmc Posted September 17, 2012 Report Share Posted September 17, 2012 Definitely get it as straight as possible at this stage. Depending on how much you have to take off, the easiest is to make it up by making the gap stop a little wider. If thats too much then you have to remember to make the stretchers a llttle shorter. Either way there is no harm in being a little thinner KC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric. Posted September 17, 2012 Report Share Posted September 17, 2012 x3. My split ended up being about 3/32" bigger than the plans called for because my slabs were slightly undersized. Makes no difference. Just make the appropriate changes to the size of your gapstop, and you're golden. I'd run it over the jointer and square it up, no question. The other thing you could do if you were that worried about it for some reason, is to make your front laminate slightly thicker. This will set your dogs and tail vise location further back from the front of the bench by whatever the discrepancy, but again, makes no difference that I can think of. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dustinsmith Posted September 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 18, 2012 I took all the advice and flattened the sides of each slab this evening. I worked all sides using a No. 7 hand plane, rather than running the slabs over the jointer. I thought doing it by hand would give me better control and would help keep the sides of each slab parallel with each other. After 2hrs of planing, I was done and only lost 1/32" of width on one slab, and 3/32" on the other. I figure I'll just make up the width on the front laminate and gap stop. Thanks guys! Dustin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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