so we've got our bench tops laminated that means they're glued up we've left
them to dry overnight and now I've got to surface plane the under side surfaces of the bench
tops, the underside is where we want to make sure there's no twist in there
because when we start to assemble all the components will end up with a
twisted top a twisted frame everything will be twisted and anything we add to
that later like cupboards or shelves and so on will be twisted too so I want to get
this right and how we're going to do that first of all I'm going to skim off the
unevenness on the whole bench and I'm going to use a number 4 plane, this
is my favourite plane I can do anything with a number four that
you can do with a four and a half or a five, five-and-a-half pretty much, I
like all of the planes I'm not really differentiated I'm just saying that I
can do everything with this on this bench that I need to do so you just need
a plain Jane number four plane no thick irons no heavy weights this will do the job and watch this, so
I'm going to go tangentially across the grain here first of all you can hear I'm taking
nothing off here and then I come to the sides and I'm taking a little bit off
there but I keep working on the high
spots a little bit more until I get a nice straight edge across here keep
checking here, look for the high spots this is where you start to see how well
your joints come together these are all nice and tight use the
edge of you plane, your corner of your plane is going to be straight so just use that save a little time you
can use a straightedge if you want to so I've got this first one foot fairly
good there's a technique instead of sitting
behind it throw the plane at it this way to work
backwards from one end to the other end so at the moment we're just trying to get
this any cut, anyone unevenness out high on the outside edges, pretty straight now now we're flat there so I work across
the length of the top now yeah really worked well pretty high on this outside one here and
I can see that, you can hear I'm planing against the grain there, so I turn
around and working on the pool I'm fairly flat, in fact I'm flat what I'm gonna do now is use some
winding sticks these will help guarantee the tops not twisted so I just took a 1
x 2 to x 1 depends on what side of the pond they're
parallel another flat line across the top edge of one of these pieces so that I have a contrast it's all I need and I can put one
piece down here keep it even and then I stand at this
other end and I site one with the other like this and there's a hair fluctuation
there which will take me, it's really this corner and this corner that's
slightly high but it's very quickly remedied here now I'm going to eyeball along here and
I'm nice and straight one more test you don't take very much underneath to
distort what you're getting so and that's it time after twist so that's the underside of my bench top I'm going to leave the other side until
my bench is altogether and I'm going to wind up the whole of the benchtop from
both sides and I'll show you how we do that when we get the bench together
