Grizzly Jointer with Powerfeed with Extra Parts

[WDH]

I skip plane all my hardwood to 1" or 15/16" thick.  Makes a huge difference when the customers can see the planed surface.  The only place around here to buy hardwood lumber except for me is the Big Box Stores.  Their lumber is 50% to 100% more to buy and is finished planed to 3/4".  This does not allow the customer any flexibility if a boards needs more flattening or has some bow or twist.  With my skip planed lumber that costs much less, you get a board that allows you some room for additional milling to get perfect pieces, or they are already perfect and you can use them with the extra thickness like for table tops, etc. 

Although I will do it for a customer, I rarely finish plane any wood below 15/16".  However, it is much more common for me to joint one edge straight for a customer who does not have a jointer and needs one true, straight edge so that they can run the boards through their tablesaw. 

[Remle]

I have seen the phrase skip plane a lot in posts.  Are you just using a 1 sided planer and running the boards through, without using the jointer, when you skip plane?

"skip planing"  is done to make the faces of lumber parallel to each other removing the high spots. In days gone by they used long bed planes to skip over the low spots and plane off the high ones. On modern day machinery it can be done with a jointer, making multi passes to flatten one face removing all the low spots and then using a planner to get the other face parallel. Or you can use a planner taking thin cuts and reversing the faces as you plane. As the planer pulls the wood through it will plane the high spots and stop on the low, then you push it on to the next high area till you have no more low spots and parallel faces. IMHO the others are referring to over size thickness planing removing the rough saw face to expose the grain pattern beneath.

[YellowHammer]

I'm think we saying the same thing, just different words.  We can not sell a constant thickness board if it isn't straight, so pure thicknessing with a planer doesn't do any real good.  The skip planing serves the purpose of straightening the boards and removing cup.  Good, semi commercial and commercial multihead long bed planers, especially carpet planers, are designed to serve as high speed jointers/planers in a single pass and will clean up boards surprisingly well.  Planers like mine that allow dropping the bed rollers into the cast iron also serve as short bed jointers, and do a decent job of removing irregularities.  The goal is not to necessarily plane both sides, but remove the irregularities with only a minimum amount of wood removed.  The other goal of course would be to have a perefectly planed board on both sides after this process, but since the depth of cut is set and limited, that rarely happens.  However, the better the sawing job, the less "skips" and the more fully surfaced the board.   

[Just Me]

 I have a 12" Minimax jointer and I back it up to my shaper and use the feeder from the shaper. The shaper weighs 3300#, does not move, so it works out well and I only need one feeder.

I think it would work with a lighter shaper, but not sure.

The tables on my planer are 36" long. so I will run it across the jointer until I have no more than 18" between flats, then the planer will take care of it.

I want one of those newer Comatic DC feeders, mostly because they are so easy to flip from vertical to horizontal. The variable speed would be cool as well, but as you guys with big feeders know, that easy switch would be awesome.

[YellowHammer]

Kiln dried, rough sawn, stacked to go to the planer. Kind of ugly, doesn't stack well, lots of variation.  We plane lots of our own wood, but I outsorce several thousand bdft per week.



 

Below, skip planed wide maple, with low spot, so "skipped" or "missed" and didn't quite remove all the low spot.  This is the big difference between pure thicknessing (forcing the board down to the planer bed, or letting it ride off, like a jointer). The board is flatter and straighter after this step, and a maximum of 15/16" thick for grading, stacking and selling. 


 


The end result, uniform stacks of straight boards after they come back. The miscellaneous boards in the black rack in front of the forklift are boards that are so bowed or cupped that they would not make a straight board.  They are culled and sold as low grade Project wood for people who don't mind "grumpy" boards, or will be cutting them into shorts. 


 

[WV Sawmiller]

Danny,

   Have you re-visited your prices lately? If you are selling your hardwoods for half what the big box stores are you actually charging enough? If you are satisfied with the profit you are making then I guess the answer is that you are. I'd bet your quality is better than the big box store.

   I had a customer come by yesterday and bought 25 bf of cherry I had air dried 3-4 years. They just wanted to build a kitchen table top and turned out I had a small forgotten stock that was just adequate for their project. As we talked I found they did not have a planer and asked if they would like me to run it through my little Delta planer and they did so I planed it down to about 7/8". The wood finished out really pretty and they were very happy and tipped well for the service. This is the first I have planned for anyone else. I just recently added another outlet and built a small shelf on to my shed to accommodate this and I may need to come up with a price for such services and do more of it. The best thing is the customers were very happy and will be sending their son down to look at some walnut crotches I cut a couple of weeks ago. 

[WDH]

My prices are based off the Hardwood Market Report.  For example, the HMR price for a tractor trailer load of kiln dried, rough sawn FAS red oak is $1.63 per BF.  This is a wholesale price.  I double that price and add some for freight/transport as the HMR price is F.O.B. sawmill and does not include trucking cost to the buyer's place of business.  I also add for skip planing the lumber.  For FAS red oak, this puts me at $4.50/bf for kiln dried and skip planed to 15/16".  This is in essence the retail price.

The Box stores sell finish planed to 3/4" red oak that is S4S (surfaced 4 sides, meaning the edges have been jointed straight) for $8.00 to $9.00/bf based on width and length.  That is not the market that I am catering too.  The buyers of this wood generally do not have any tools like table saws, planers, jointers, etc. and are very small DIY, picture frames and stuff, kind of people. 

I cater to woodworkers that are knowledgeable about wood and how to use it.  They usually have fully equipped shops or a basic level of woodworking equipment.  They range from professional full time custom furniture makers to homeowners who have a shop and build personal or family projects.  They usually have some idea of retail wood prices and use the internet to check out prices.

I do a lot of research on-line to see what other producers are selling lumber for to get a reference.  Some are higher and some are lower.  My prices are usually somewhere in the middle of that.