Smooth rough lumber, clean up sawn edges and reclaim salvaged boards with our Board Flattening Services
Have a rough piece of lumber that you need smoothed out, but not ready to pay the high price for planing? Book an appointment to have your wood planed or flattened via router sled.
Our planer creates the standard surfaced appearance characteristic of most contemporary lumber stock. DDC can plane material up to 24″ wide and 9-12″ thick.
For larger or custom pieces we use a router sled table-top setup.
precision wood smoothing in escondido
A major benefit of using a thickness planer is to easily create a flat surface. This is essential when you are working with large projects, wood slabs, or even intricate glue-ups. You may be able to flatten one face of a board with a belt sander or hand plane but without a planer, it will be near impossible to have parallel surfaces.
A thickness planer is the best tool to quickly mill rough stock to have a smooth surface as well as uniform thickness. Planers also give you the ability to dial in the exact thickness of the board rather than relying on a lumber mill to get to the final thickness.
A planer is a great way to take old wood from any source and give it new life, sometimes imperfections give a project unique character. I personally have repurposed pallet wood, old live edge slabs, and fence wood using my planer.
Moreover, a wood planer also improves the overall look and feel of surfaces being worked on. They can easily make short work of planing off rough spots or ‘scrags’ – eliminating any potential blemishes that might detract from the overall aesthetic of the item.
In addition to this, oiling down surfaces (which should always be done before any woodworking project begins) can also be aided by a power planer – the smooth surface allows even coverage with no patches left untouched.
planing reclaimed material
One note of caution… knots on seasoned dry material have a tendency to fall apart during the planning process. Saw sizing, then surface sanding, or using the router sled, is a better option for most reclaimed seasoned material.
Router sleds allow you to make multiple controlled passes over the surface of your material whether you’re working on live edge or even glue ups for cutting boards to level out the surface.
What about sanding?
Sanding will still be required, after the planing process is complete. Planing is designed to take off material in bulk but in controlled depths, rather than a smooth to the touch finish. Planing will leave tiny visible lines from each pass required to be made. These can easily be cleaned up with a belt sander or palm sander.