Turn Your Planer into a Jointer

How to use a shopmade sled to flatten boards in your planer.

Produced by Ben Strano, Edited by Jeff Roos, Video by Jeff Roos and Ben Strano

If you have a board that’s too wide for your jointer, you can use a planer sled for flattening. Dillon Ryan shows you how simple it is to do.

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Comments

Here's what I don't get: why is the cleat on the sled placed in the back? It would seem to me that the feed rollers would try to push the stock off the sled. It seems to me the cleat should be in the front? Can anyone explain this?

That looks like a lot more trouble than it is worth. Why not just place the board on a flat table and glue sacrificial pieces on each edge that are higher than the height of the high corner of the board to the flat surface. Same method some of us use to eliminate snipe on the ends of the board. In fact, that was the original reason I used this method. Personally, a 12 inch planer is probably the most dangerous tool in a wood shop, and as such, I wouldn't have the guts to use one to flatten a wide board. I have a 60 year old Delta 6" that I use strictly to edge joint material. Rarely do I use it to flatten stock.

@fxdp, as far as I can tell, he definitely is running that backward. Lucky it is glued. This could be a mini disaster (board and sled separate, nothing under board, board gets kicked, sled hits human. Maybe not super-likely, but scary to tempt fate there.

@USAFCheif, also a good tip, but you're gluing, clamping, drying, planing the assembly (upside down from how you glued it, I assume?), ripping the glue joint off on the TS, and then planing to thickness. Lotta steps. Plus, if the piece is live edge or the edges are too uneven, I'm not sure how sacrificial boards would work. You can't joint a square edge before one face is flat, so it's a whole chicken egg thing, no?