Step Three: Flatten the Face

Now you have a piece that is approaching the size you want. Take the face side you have marked and mill it flat. You can use a set of winding sticks and a scrub plane, followed by a smoothing plane to achieve this. You could use a hand held power plane, but I find these to be very inaccurate. My preference is to use a jointer. Simply run the face you select through taking a little off at a time until it is flat and smooth. A thickness planer will not work for this operation. Thickness planers are designed to make one face parallel to the opposite face, and only work for the lumber that is pinched under the feed rollers at the time. This means that any twist, cup, crook or bow will remain. The long bed of the jointer is designed to flatten and remove deformations over the length of the board creating lumber that is truly flat.

Our example board is placed face side - the marked side - down on the jointer table. I prefer rubber bottomed push blocks to help me pass the board over the cutters at a slow, steady rate. I make sure that the depth of cut is shallow. I don’t run a production shop so time isn't money - I want to do a good job of this so I take my time. Once the face edge has been cleaned and flattened, I replace the square mark that was lost during the process. Now I have a nice, flat face.