Man, you gotta love power tools. It's all about the power. With very little upper body strength I appreciate all the help I can get. Today I replaced a lost piece of my planer (a gib if you know what that is). Then I took some 4 ft. x 12" slices of beautiful cedar that Lee Kimbrell had cut from one of many trees that succumbed to last year's drought. They were about 3 1/2 inches thick, so I planed it down to about 2 1/2 in. thick.
Before
Since that planner is so noisy and rough, I was extra cautious to take thin slices...about 20 passes in all. By the time I had run it through enough times to make me sore, I saw that the cute pattern in the middle where the bark had folded in upon itself when it was young (about 30 years ago) was just a weak hole in the middle.
I had planned to make benches out of these slices, but once I pictured my butt plopping down on a flexible piece of wood that had a large crack in the middle....ouch! They are now destined to be the back of the bench. I think anyone's back will stand a better chance than their butt.
After
While I didn't get as far as I wanted today, boy do I smell good. Those cedar chips were scattering like fireworks, and the wood itself was almost pure red and purple, it will be beautiful when I clear coat it.
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