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I’m wondering if there are any tricky traditionsl methods for jointing/planing short pieces of wood, like tthe 90-110mm long pieces I use for guitars and uke neck heels. When gluing neck heel blocks to the neck shaft, I usually am able to joint or plane long pieces and then cut them into the shorter heel pieces that I use. However, as it goes with processing wood, I often end up with some short, unjointed pieces that I would like to use. Hard to plane a 90mm long piece for joining to the neck shaft. The woods involved are Spanish cedar, Honduras mahogany, and Australian red cedar. Thanks, Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

That's pretty short. You could clamp it with pieces in front and behind it to make it effectively longer then just use a plane.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Considering the properties of those woods - I would run them through the drum sander to "plane" the surface and glue and clamp them. They are relatively soft woods and heel joints are pretty short.

Jointers have a tendency to "bite" when you least expect it, especially when jointing short stock.

You might be able to glue some longer outriggers of scrap to the sides and plane it all at the same time. Just a thought.

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

Do you have a stationary disc sander, Bob? I use the 12" disc on my ShopSmith for all kinds of small jointing and shaping. It requires a good dust collector though.

Same as Barry, I use the disc sander for jointing block ends. It’s quick and reliable and works well enouh that I think I could get away with an HHG rub joint. But, I clamp it anyway.

Edge sander…you could even tape down a piece of 100 grit and hand rub it…

Well, that's what I do all the time, using whatever plane happens to be handy at the time, from a #6 to a block plane.

The technique is to get it reasonably flat first, off a saw (band saw, table saw, what ever you have). Put the piece in a vise, then plane across both diagonals (separately) covering all the surface, then finish off in line. Check flatness with an engineer's square. For the woods with interlocking grain, use a high angle plane. A standard angle block plane with a 40-45 degree bevel works fine. If it takes more than 2 minutes there's something wrong, either rocking the plane on the piece (if you're using a long plane) or the plane is way out of flat (if using a short plane).

I've never got a truly flat surface off any sanding device!

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I have a dead flat surface (granite benchtop) and stick sandpaper down to it, put a grid of pencil marks on the face of the piece, and rub rub it on the flat abrasive surface until all of the pencil marks are gone.

I use my beloved extra-extra-coarse 8x3" DMT dia-sharp stone and a 50 grit sanding belt. Clamp one end of the belt to the bench and put the stone underneath and rub on that for rough flattening and squaring of surfaces. Swipe off the dust with a toothbrush every 10 strokes or so. Then rub on the diamond stone itself to refine the surface, again sweeping dust frequently.

Don't rub back and forth; that tends to round things. Just push forward and lift up each stroke. Even then it takes some finesse to apply even pressure. I also use a repetitive pattern where I do 10 strokes, then rotate 180 degrees and do 10, rotate 90 degrees and do 10, rotate 180 degrees and do 10. That helps to cancel out any uneven pressure.

I've had much better luck with this approach than trying to plane small things. Especially endgrain. And when you need precise flatness, squareness, and length all at once. With enough repetition, you can build yourself a small CNC machine from a pile of 2x4 scraps Another noteworthy technique is when you need to make a strong endgrain joint, flatten the surface, apply watery hide glue, let it dry, and re-flatten on the diamond stone. That clogs the grain so it won't starve the joint, and since hide glue bonds to itself the resulting joint is much stronger than you can get with any other glue.

Another thing you could try - place a fine set jointer plane upside down in a vise and push the wood across the plane. Some people edge join lute staves this way.

Like Trevor Gore, with a freshly sharpened blade in my LN-62.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Strange, I read everywhere about hide glue’s low cohesive strength. I gather that's why HHG joints have to be a very good fit for strength.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Correct. That's why you have to do the re-flattening step after the pore-clogging coat. The trouble with other glues is that you either get a starved joint, or have most of the surface contaminated with adhesion-resistant dry glue.

Though now that I think about it, do glues like Titebond stick to hide glue residue? Might be interesting to try pre-treating with hide but doing the final joint with something else.

Regarding the original question: A small hand plane and accurate square will do the job well, but some folks aren’t comfortable with their hand plane skills.

I have had success using a disc sander, but only if I set up a jig that guarantees only linear movement of the workpiece, i.e., feeding it toward and away from the disc. If you freehand it, the risks of getting a convex surface, instead of a flat surface, are high.

Using the disc sander, with the right jig, is probably my favorite way of flattening relatively small surfaces, because it is fast and repeatable. For instance, I put together a jig for cutting (on my bandsaw) neck scarf joints and then flattening (on the disc sander) the surfaces for gluing. It goes so fast, and comes out so clean and precise, that it feels like I’m cheating.

What Trevor said.

I learned the trick to getting a flat surface with abrasives from a machinist who was making his own set of gauge blocks. He had milled 1" square pieces off flat and a tiny bit over thickness, and had the steel case hardened. He spent his lunch breaks with a sandwich in one hand and lapped the blocks with the other on an iron lapping plate with some very fine abrasive. He pushed the blocks around with a finger in the middle of the block, using a figure-8 motion across the corners. His blocks were optically flat within less than 1/4 wave length of the florescent lights in the shop.

When you push something across a surface like that there's a tendency for it to dig in on the front edge and remove more material. As you go back and forth you round it off around the edges. By going in figure 8s you effectively make two cuts off the center for each cut on a corner, and since the center really can't get lower then a corners it ends up flat. This is the same idea as planing on diagonals, since the plane tends to cut most at the start of the cut.

A fresh planed joint is the cleanest and glues best. Sanding leaves a very rough surface, and lots of dust and junk that gets in the way. Back in WW2 the forest products lab found that laminated propeller blanks that had been thicknessed with sanders tended to come apart more than ones that had been made with a power planer. Scraping tends to burnish over the fibers; it's cleaner than sanding and smoother. It's usually a good idea to scrape a sanded surface to clean it up. A fresh cut with a sharp plane leaves the wood structure intact, and produces high 'surface energy' that binds more strongly to the glue.

It's worth while to learn to sharpen and set up at least one hand plane. It's usually at least as fast as a sander in these cases, and does a much better job.

You can't have just one handplane

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Hutch

Get the heck off the couch and go build a guitar!!!!

Thanks again for the replies. I have gotten some interesting planing ideas to try. Good luck with your building.-Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

For short pieces I have switched to a small adjustable mouth block plane by bridge city tools ,now harvey. It has an adjustable throat, is super accurate, is light made out of alum. an has 4 depth adjusters so you can easily dial in the depth . For more accuracy a large granite surface plate from Grizz.

Hey, that's a neat looking little plane and it seems to be one the"Special Deal for today". They show a "regular price" of $165 and are offering it right now it's $79. I just ordered one. Shipping is a little painful tho.

Thanks for the tip!

A flat surface and a graphite stick would be what I'd use for something precision, or if you like...
To use as a tool to make planing really easy to learn.
Something small is what I'd use, and take heed of stopped shavings as per David Charlesworth's videos.

Long reach angle poise lamp preferable to any other spot lamp, (use a bulb with nice warm light)
https://www.youtubetrimmer.com/view/?v= ... 65&end=506

One can do the same thing for larger work with some crayon (black/dark ones works best)

but for smaller work some graphite or even just burnishing can be used to great effect, once
the techniques which Charlesworth demonstrates are employed.
He really is the best resource you will find IMO, don't think I need link his videos on a luthiers forum, as most will instantly
see his work is about precision.
Rob Cosman has a few videos showing this also, harder to wade through all the content though,
Not what one might be asking for, since were talking about small stuff, but the techniques are pretty much the same.
https://youtu.be/GGuGFGAQTxE?t=1134

i.e ...sighting the work on a flat datum with good lamp.
Pivoting from an end, and
Feeling or listening for rocking with fingers on the opposite diagonals of the work.

All these things require one to plane on the benchtop or planing stop that won't deflect, rather than planing material held in the vice.
Gang planing can also be employed to good effect if you have a few bits that you want to use up.

I'm just not a big fan of sanding to make jointed surfaces. With the aid of a friend, I came up with this idea. Been playing with it. put a few necks together, and it works pretty good for me. http://www.pegasusguitars.com/planing-s ... -wood.html Thanks for all the responses though. Much appreciated.

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso

Robert, FYI . You may want to fiddle around with that little plane before using it. I suggest easy planing woods like basswood, aspen, cedar etc to get the hang of it . It will take an ultra thin shaving less than 1/2 of 1 thousand of an inch. For making necks I prefer a plane over sanding. The fresh planed edge creates a better glue bond than sanding.

Nice idea!
So if you had several to do you could place them end for end in the sandwich?

Clay- Thjat would probably work. Usually if I had several to do, I would have had a longer piece to work with first.-Bob

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“ The meaning of life is to find your gift and the purpose of life is to give it away” Pablo Picasso