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I have a general wood working question... but it applies to guitar making.

Generally, to get a piece of lumber s4s you joint a face, joint an edge using the face you just made to ride along the fence, plane the opposite face, and then use the newly planed face to joint the opposite edge.

I understand that, and I use it all the time for small pieces of wood (I have a 6" jointer).

But lets say that I have 3 planks of hondo mahogany 8' long, 2.25" thick, and 16" wide. They are rough.

Without a 16" jointer how would I tackle this project?

I have heard of using a router mounted above the board on rails to get one level face, but I am unclear on how you clamp/hold the board so that you get one perfectly flat face.

I am thinking of chopping 2 of these planks up into blanks for electric guitars, and the other one into laminated neck stock. The neck plank will be easy to mill, but I am scratching my head on the solid body blanks.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

you don't want to know How my grandfather did it but if you have access at both ends clamp there and not worry with those areas and cut them off back to planed area.

Brock--Depending on how badly warped the board is, hot glue works good to temporarily hold something like this.
The advantage is that it won't try to pull the board flat as clamps would plus the glue isn't in the way.
Pry it apart when finished.
May want to try a test piece first as I'm not sure how well hot glue (different types) sticks to mahogany and whether you would have some tearout when seperating.
I do this quite often to hold maple (for example) down to MDF (particle board) for surfacing one side flat on a large faceplate lathe. The MDF acts as a spoilboard as the hotglue will pull divots.
Nelson

I'd cut the pieces to length first, then use a hand plane to knock down any high spots and get it reasonably level, then pass it through my drum sander, flat face down.

The stock is pretty flat. No twist or cupping. It is really old. A neighbor found it in an old barn and I picked them all up for $50. It is rough sawn and a little nicked up, but surfaced it should be great.

Thanks for the ideas. This sounds like a good way to go.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

I'd love to see how you tackle this ;) I also do not have a 16" jointer and have some quilt and curl 1 piece electric tops that I'd like to flatten out.. I was going to build a sled for my 24" thickness planer but haven't taken the time to sit back and figure out how to clamp it.

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CVT Inc.
A tour of our shop (Somewhat outdated)
My Personal eBay profile. BCWoodBug

Your welcome to use my 15" planer the all is left to do is joint the edges off of the planned faces.

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

This hot glue idea has been stuck with me since I read it.. I'm going use short screws and shims and screw these to 3/4 inch mdf.. that way I can clean a face on the planer then take the whole setup out to the woodmizer (band mill) and cut a 5/8ths top plate, then all thats left to do is sand down to 1/2" on the rough sawn face.. then repeat the whole process until your down to nothing from the 3" billets..

I love this forum ;) gets the wheels turning and the dust blown off about stuff I've totally put off and put away in the back of my mind.

_________________
CVT Inc.
A tour of our shop (Somewhat outdated)
My Personal eBay profile. BCWoodBug

The December issue of American Woodworker as an article on building a jig to use a router as a jointer. I have not tried it but it looks to me like it would work. I have also seen plans to put together a jig to use a router as a planner. Its similar to the jig used to make radius dishes except there is no curve to the bar the router slides back and forth on.

It would probably be easier to call a local woodworkers club or cabinet maker and see if someone with the equipment would be willing to do it for you though. Wood workers tend to be pretty good about stuff like this.

Joe Volin

I am new here and am much more of a woodworker than a luthier at this point but am trying to make the jump.

You can do this by hand with hand planes, here's a link that will give the basics and if you search around there's probably lots of more links out there as well. Plus any basic woodworking book that covers hand planes explains how to do this. I have been wood working for many years and still don't have a jointer or a planer with a cord on it that is.

Good luck

http://www.woodcentral.com/bparticles/plane_panel.shtml

Brock:

A lot of wood working shops will run it through their drum sander or thickness planer for a very reasonable cost. The router way works but is quite slow. Only 3/4" at time across the piece. Then you have to make up the rails and so on. If you have a router table you can router out the majority of wood length wise leaving only small strips to support board. Then when you are done, you then plane and scrape off the support pieces. The support pieces should be about 1/8" wide. I have done this on pieces of wood it works well. Looks like this
[__]___]___] the bottom line representing your finished height of board. The "]" marks representing your wood left for a support area. (Its so the wood stays up as you router away the rest.) Make sure that any cup is down. There are many ways to square up wood. What is paramount is the time taken to do it. That is for you to decide.

It's very common to rip it and then glue the straight parts back together.

Fine woodworking has had endless solutions to this problem. The main idea is to make sure that you don't force the wood flat while you surface it. Fine woodworking also had an article about how to do this with wood planes. I love working with wood planes, and have a Lie Nelson roughing plane, but I can't imagine really jointing something that big. Seems like the last one had an article on how to do it with hand-held planers. I've always wanted one of those.

You could flatten just parts of it with the router to fit rails under it along its length, and then run it through the planer or surface sander. I did the rail trick with my workbench top, but not for quite the same reason.