I'm puzzled by how a planer works to flatten timber that is either bowed or irregular. Here are my two questions:
1) How does it work in the first place? - if I have a bowing length of wood, as I feed it through the planer, why won't the planer still just take a slither of wood across the entire length and hence still by bowing?
I can understand if you feed the wood so it's concaved to the blades, then the two ends will be cut away on the first pass, then on successive passes, you end up working from the end to the middle leaving a straight face, but that assumes a long enough flat table top either side of the blades, but how does a typical compact bench top one work where the table top is fairly short then?
2) In feeding the wood across the cutter head, presumably the hand force you use to press the wood down (so it doesn't shoot off the blade) will also dictate the quality/flatness of the final surface, i.e. if it's again bowed concaved, you can probably easily push down on it to hit the blade, but isn't there a good chance that the final surface will still bowed as it springs back after it's been passed through?
Clearly you can tell I have never used a planer before. I want to buy one but need to understand the mechanics before deciding whether a bench top of freestanding one will be better for me
Thanks as always..
1) How does it work in the first place? - if I have a bowing length of wood, as I feed it through the planer, why won't the planer still just take a slither of wood across the entire length and hence still by bowing?
I can understand if you feed the wood so it's concaved to the blades, then the two ends will be cut away on the first pass, then on successive passes, you end up working from the end to the middle leaving a straight face, but that assumes a long enough flat table top either side of the blades, but how does a typical compact bench top one work where the table top is fairly short then?
2) In feeding the wood across the cutter head, presumably the hand force you use to press the wood down (so it doesn't shoot off the blade) will also dictate the quality/flatness of the final surface, i.e. if it's again bowed concaved, you can probably easily push down on it to hit the blade, but isn't there a good chance that the final surface will still bowed as it springs back after it's been passed through?
Clearly you can tell I have never used a planer before. I want to buy one but need to understand the mechanics before deciding whether a bench top of freestanding one will be better for me
Thanks as always..