Bit-O-Progress

I had a few minutes last night to do a little more planing on my bench top.  I traversed the entire top using the scrub plane to take off the rough-sawn exterior.  Big chips, light tool, easy.

The scrub plane and the knots aren’t on speaking terms, so I switched over to my Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Jack Plane with a toothed blade.  I’m loving that tool.  All the knots were sticking up above the surface at this point, so I worked each knot down individually.  Then I started planing at about a 45 degree angle to the length of the top, still using the toothed jack.  I worked the top surface in 1/3s, here I’ve made an initial pass over the nearest 1/3 of the top.  At this point I’m still cutting off the top of the grooves left by Mr. Scrub.  There are still a lot of low spots (darker areas).

The toothed jack is officially now my Weapon of Choice(tm) for attacking knots.  Here is a close up of one of the knots that has been worked.  I’m taking a really heavy cut, and the plane glides right across with just a little resistance.  Slightly larger, heavier tool, slightly harder to push, slightly lighter cut, slightly not easy.

After perhaps three rounds of angled planing, checking with a large straightedge and then a lengthwise pass I have tho top fairly flat.  Next step is to chase out a few small, localized lumps (that’s why the framing square is there, my straightedge weighs 10 pounds), then switch to the #8 to to flatten it further and remove the toothing.  Hefting that plane is a total cardio workout.  Really big tool, shavings not chips, seriously not easy.