The standard cycle of my life when watching one of Rob's videos; 1. That looks easy. I can do that! 2. Head to my bench to practice. 3. Spend five times the amount of time Rob spent working on a project only to find that my board looks more like the surface of the ocean on a windy day than it resembles a flat surface. 4. Remind myself that Rob is an artist who has been doing this for years and that's why he can make such a difficult task look so easy. 5. Practice, practice, practice!!! Thanks for challenging us to perfection in our work!

I’m mostly a hand tool woodworker … these videos are absolute gold. Rob is a great teacher and very skilled too. So grateful that he puts out such good quality content. 👍

This is great. Y'know what'd make a great short video - a video of you taking a rough board, and working all 6-sides, with no talking, no cuts, no edits. "Recorded live" as it were. These videos are excellent and are the true instructional content, but I'd also like to see a video where you are free to just get on with it as if the camera wasn't there. Partly to get a feel for how long it takes (years upon years of practice notwithstanding, of course), but just to admire a craftsperson at work. You could have occasional captions and/or a voice-over where necessary, and of course link to this video before and after the work is done.

Every time I watch one of these, I can’t decide whether to try to improve or simply burn my tools.

The knowledge you have and share deserves a Nobel prize. Thank you.

i like to mark any exposed wood with a dry erase or even a marks alot before i take blue tape off (when i use it) that leaves a perfect darkened line to remove that remains clearly visible until even the feather is gone.

Love the blue tape trick for this - my eyes thank you!

Thank you for the series on preparing a piece of lumber. You cannot imagine how helpful this is. Have a great day.

This was really helpful thank you!

superb work and a pleasure to watch

Waow it's incredible how accurate you are. Great demonstration professor Cosman !

Another great addition to the training library. Time to study, study, study (= plane, plane, plane). Thanks Rob~!

Great video as always Rob, love the blue tape trick.

That has to be the most helpful thing I've watched anywhere. Going to have to try this next time I have a board to plane down.. Thanks. Many thanks.

Fantastic Rob, really enjoyed this, learnt loads. Dave

What's great is that you've covered just about every bit of information here and there I was wondering along the way. A question comes up in my mind and you answer it at some point. One of the best one was the problem with the plane jumping off at the starting edge. I was fighting with that one once and conquered it somehow, that "ah-ha" moment came when you explained it. Thanks!

Precisely done, thanks Rob, another great tutorial! Even with failing eyes, I know that feeling too well. Good wishes as always, UK Dave

“…enough to bother me.” I hear you 😊 Thanks for this series Rob, it is very much appreciated. Love the blue tape idea too 👓👍🏼

I really like that trick with the tape. I switched to progressive lenses which has helped seeing my lines, but the tape will make it so much easier. Thank you!

Awsome, thanks for sharing your knowledge that i’m sure takes a lot of practice through years of woodworking !!

So good, Rob, thanks! I have been thicknessing by hand for a couple of years, with varying degrees of success. I am going to watch this again, but take notes this time!

Always great. I instinctively done most of the things that you cover out of many mistakes yet great to have someone with your knowledge explaining the why and also there are always little gems here and there to help my work. Thanks.

Looking forward to getting my new 5 1/2 and hopefully doing the same thing!

I found that when I slow down my passes, making sure the blade engages and doesn't skip at the start, I get a smoother, more consistent pass. There are times when I get a "skip" further into the board though. Sharpening seems to help eliminate that issue, as well skewing a bit more seems to help keep the blade engaged. I also check to make sure I'm not introducing twist using the flat surface method. That is, laying the board surface on a flat surface - my table saw - and check for any rocking and note where it needs work. Later, I use my square across the face of the planed surface attempting to discover low or high spots. Getting close to the gauge line, I slow everything down and take the lightest passes possible. It's definitely a process - most of which I've learned from your great videos! Thanks!!

Can't tell you how glad I am that I have jointer and planer after watching this series. Rob's work is incredible, but I can handle that much time on one board. However, I have recently picked up a couple hand planes and enjoy using them for thing that power tools won't do. Still have a lot to learn with the hand planes but I'm getting there. Thanks Rob.

I love watching your content Rob you truly are an inspiration to me. I wish I lived in Canada so I could attend your workshops. I have to make do watching your projects online which anyone wanting to take their woodworking to the next level must join

Amazing work

A few weeks ago I was building some replacement cabinets for our kitchen. The doors are frame and panel construction with panels that are 17” x 24”. No access to a wide planner or thickness sander. I was extremely lucky to find a hickory board that was a little under 18” wide by 1” thick and long enough for the four panels. I didn’t want to rip the boards in half to plane them down and then try to glue them back together so I planed them by hand. I needed them to be about 9/16” thick to match the existing cabinets but it seemed more important that the panels were the same thickness than what that thickness actually was. The grain in the panels is awesome but it swirls and rises and falls all over the place so I really struggled with tearout. Your tips on a tight mouth, and especially a 20 deg back bevel really helped. The blue tape trick would have made it a lot easier to see where I was at but it is definitely in my arsenal for the future. I used a radiused blade to take about 1/8” of both sides and then my #7 to flatten each side. I finished up with my #5 1/2 and the high angle blade and got almost all of the tearout cleaned up. I had to use a card scraper on a couple spots on each panel and then I sanded them with 220 grit sandpaper to even out the surface. They each have five coats of varnish and have been assembled and I’m installing the hinges and mounting them on the carcasses this week. I don’t think I would have attempted this if it hadn’t been for your great videos and tips. I surprised myself and my wife. I can’t wait to get the cabinets installed.

Absolutely awesome series! I am a beginner and have been frustrated by having to true all the sides of my boards before even starting a project. I will say, though, that I appreciate the necessity and have gotten so that I now get a satisfaction from the process and see it as just another step in the journey. Thank you for your patient explanations and attention to detail.

Great video, thanks! One of the things I’m taking with me from this is the fact that I shouldn’t despair if it takes me half an hour to perfect one face of a board.

Two of your best tips are the tape and the head gear. It is amazing how much closer I can cut/plane to the line when I can see it

Thank you so much Rob for the nice video. It was as if I was cutting this piece of wood with you. :) It was amazing ... Thanks again, take care of yourself and good luck. Best regards, Daniel.

I was thinking all day how to make 6th face. This video was i was looking for. The blue tape trick is awesome, ill use alot

Just have a look at how planing brings out the colour, vibrancy and detail of that timber. And did you see the gloss that sharp blade is giving the timber? Wow! Rob's pursuit of excellence is infectious. After watching some of his videos I now use a digital caliper when I get close to the line to then adjust the level so I can an even push to the final thickness. All the highs and low are taken out well before hand and I just keep measuring and leveling all the way to the end. The dark side in motion.

Thanks for sharing that!

Dear Rob, as always appreciated your teaching. It is truly lovely to wield a finely tuned plane like the one you use. Would you ever use a wooden plane instead of steel? You get the added bonus of burnished timber that way. I notice that you remove each piece of shaving with every stroke. Nice explanation 3/4 way through. Makes sense. Cheers.

Using your marker to "grid out" the surface is a very nice technique and helps develop your mindset on how to do this efficiently. I use the same thing with a pencil on my Japanese water stones whenever I take them to the diamond stone for flattening. Helps ensure they're truly flat when the pencil marks are completely gone and also saving some time (and stone!) by not taking off more material than necessary. :-)

Really effing impressed

Its just a sum of the parts....well said. Needed to hear that thank you

HI rob just love how sharp ur blades r. cool.

glad to sweaty..... i can do it all day Sir... i like your tools...

don't ya just love the sound of a plane zipping through wood? the tape trick is brilliant...at 65 years of age and wearing progressive specs every advantage i can get for my eyesight is valuable.

Hallelujah for powered thickness planers, haha! I will admit it's very therapeutic watching your master-level work, though. Thank you.

Ok master, that’s the way I am doing it, seems right! Love this teaching! One question: on larger panels do you ever plane all the board diagonally and crossing to quickly ensure flatness in both directions?

Has Mike Pekovich “Mr Blue Tape” cashed his royalty check yet? 🤣 Well done demo! Keep up the good work.

The sound of the blade shearing off material is soothing.

Dammit man! Still waiting for the apron to come available! Getting ready to move to a new house with a decent size shop and loving all of the info you guys put forth. Think I'll stick with my dial indicator and leave my micrometer to automotive. That's about ten thousandths more more precise than i really want to know...

Hey Rob, when you do that last pass on the far edge, would it be a good idea to screw the plane towards you to have more reference surface, like when you start?

Are there plans available for this project? ;) Great finale to the series. A nicely prepared board only needs the joinery cut and it's ready to take a finish.

I like the blue tape trick, however another novel idea I have come across is, instead of using a marking or cutting gauge to set the finished size with use a plough plane and set from the fence to the inner edge of the cutter the finished size. Then with the fence on the face side plane a shallow groove which will appear as a rebate (rabbet) on the face requiring planing. Do all four edges but doing the long grain first followed by the end-grain which should address any breakout issues. you should end up with a small rebate on the back side the exact size of the finished board. All that's needed then is to plane down to the rebate, checking for flatness as you go. The rebate is much easier on the eyes than a gauge line and facilitates an exact 90 degree corner as opposed to feathering which can sometimes occur when using a marking gauge.

Great tip with the painter tape. Makes it much easier to quickly gauge progress! Thank you for another great video packed with useful information!

if you weren't filming and teaching, how long would that have actually taken you ? Absolutely great videos and teaching sir .

Fun, i miss being in the workshop and using my handplanes. The next best thing is to watch someone else do it

What are the advantages of using hand planes to thickness wood over a planer, aside from getting a good workout? I love handplanes and use them a lot, but thicknessing a board by hand is very time consuming when a planer will do it in a fraction of the time. I'll usually use a smoother after it has gone through the planer. Keep it up Rob, amazing knowledge, experience, and skills!

Waxing! I wasn’t a believer. Trying to plane a 2 x 10 today, making a workbench, tough going. Hey, I ask myself, why not try some wax? Because you don’t have the fancy wax that Rob Cosman uses. True, but you do have some carnauba wax in the drawer below, which might work. WOW! ANTIGRAV FOR A WOOD PLANE!

What do you think about the process of leaving an inch on either side of the ends, so that as you run your plane along the board, it will only allow the plane to take so much before the ends lifts the plane up, making it straight? like draw a line an inch or so out on each end ,edge to edge,, start your plane on the line and end on the line and it creates a high ledge on each end of the board of sorts. now when the heel and nose of the plane reaches that point it lifts the center up, before you know it the plane cant take any more material from the middle because of them, in theory it should be strait, never seen you do it before but i was told by my grandfather that's how you insure a strait surface. at the end, you plane them off and voila I'm sure you know what I'm talking about Your a huge inspiration Rob, keep up the great work

Today I milled two 10" x 6" pieces of cherry both faces and edges by hand. They started out .94 inches thick. The first one took me three hours and I didn’t pay attention to time on the second but it was probably at least two hours. My calipers tell me I got them within 5 thou on the first board and ten thou on the second. There are 16 more of these that I have to make so plenty of time to practice. Obviously I need to get better so it doesn’t take 3 hours. I also need to get a scrub plane since taking off 1/5th of an inch with a jack isn’t gonna fly moving forward. If this goes well the rest of the cherry I bought will get turned into picture frames. Those are gonna be longer boards but they also won’t be wider than my plane blade. And it doesn’t matter how thick those are so I can just leave them at .9" or whatever they end up once I get both faces parallel. No need to thickness it down like my current project.

Thanks for the video! You were constantly light on the left side... Thought that may be because you're skewing much more than on the left. When you skew a plane your in effect increasing the angle of the iron, therefore allowing you to cut better. So, when you plane square to the board, more of the iron is hitting the wood at once and the wood is pulling the iron in more, resulting in thicker shavings... On a micron level. Is that perhaps why you were consistently higher on the left? Because I know you were pushing with equal pressure.

A couple of tips of ease to improve this (From the beginning for newbies - it's not a matter of making it too simple so that newbies will mess it up with lack of sense) * buy gulf wax bars instead of circular lipstick type paraffin. Wear the corner of the gulf wax bars across the width round and you can pull the wax from the back of the plane to the front instead of scribbling a small line, and your wax will cover most of the sole and last much longer (it's faster, and this is lazier) * A fast inspection from the outset after facing the board will allow you to see the high spots. Deliberately work them more briskly, and they will come into flat with the rest if you overdo it a little bit. They'll come into flat with the rest on the following full length strokes, that is. * a knife gauge with the bevel set away from the depth is better for marking thickness - it cuts a deeper line and no tape is necessary, even for failing eyes - the knife line starts to appear just as you're hitting thickness * a wooden plane is far better for trying, though not everyone will have one well tuned. I don't mean a krenov plane or some catchy gimmick, but a refitted vintage plane or something similar * set the cap iron - this method can be used on glued panels through and through from edge to edge, even if the boards don't agree in direction (the reason that a wooden plane is better is the coefficient of friction is something like a third and the drastic contrast between waxed and not isn't there. The work you don't spend making heat with the sole ends up being removed wood instead, meaning you'll be able to plane a thicker shaving with it). You did a good job of showing that in order to dimension, you need to be able to take overlapping through strokes and there's no stabbing chunks of wood off with short strokes all over the place and a magic appearance of flatness when done. Everyone will have biases - for some, it will be to leave wood at one end, and part of the way through, they'll have to consciously check that and correct it. For others, it'll be to leave a corner, etc. You can plane the "tags" off, but it's better not to have them. The heavier the try plane shavings for the penultimate work, the faster this will go and the more accurate the work will be. Working just to a deep knife line and not removing the board from the vise to check will give a finished thickness within a few thousandths of the target. The last passes after trying should be done with a smoother and that can be used to even out any minor differences to the marked line.

Whole video I was wondering if you'd break out a digital caliper at the end, then I was like wow he actually did it lol

Rob, cottonwood is a local tree for my area. Any thoughts/advice for working it? I was thinking about saving up and getting a few pieces, and the idea of using something local appeals to me.

Hi Rob, it was strange seeing you wear a plain apron, I miss seeing all your decals, lol. Can you please tell me the generic name of the magnifying headset, I'm from South Africa and nobody seems to know what I'm describing, I also fall into your age demographic 😉. Thanks from Arthur in SA.

Nice work a true art but it's the time factor...i'm 70 I just can't take all that time on a project...great to know how to do it properly when needed in some cases so thanks for the easy lesson...stay safe...

Can the tape be something slightly harder so that when the plane hits it it will stop cutting?

That piece turned out pretty Oakay in the end!

A new apron ? Doesn’t look right without the patches ... thanks for the tutorial boss !

Roughly how thick would you say your cut is when you begin the process in the red oak ?

I have a question. When you say its flat and there is no light showing from your planer to the wood. Is it completely zero light coming through or is a thin line of light an acceptable tolerance?

KInda makes me want to buy a planer.

Build a bench link? I could not find it.

Nearly 60? Wow, you look great for your age!

Hey Rob, one of my eye doctors said he could make me a pair of "man cave" glasses with magnifying lenses that would magnify everything up to an arms length. He said he makes them for many people doing crafts, hobbies and computer work. You might check with your eye doc and see what they say.

I missed the blue tape part. Is that in a different video? I love that trick, but how do you know your tape is perfectly aligned to give you a perfectly dimensioned board. I struggle cutting straight, planing straight, and sometimes walking straight so I can only assume that taping straight will be a new struggle 😜

i realize that many of the techniques you are using are meant to help illustrate to us what you are doing while compensating for less than perfect eyesight to achieve fairly exact results. as woodwork is not my profession and i enjoy the process as much as i like giving the finished product to friends and family i want everything i do do be as perfect as possible. i often wonder how important this was to furniture makers 100 or more years ago when balanced against speed of production. of course it may be that they were just so damn experienced that they could be both fast and practically perfect. honestly though, it doesnt matter. if you are taking the time to do things by hand in this day and age it is because you want to.

can you apply the same principles in this video, but using a handheld (electric) jointer? I'd assume the methodology would be similar, no?

Paul: to let you know you can do it too Rob: to let you know you can do better

I use my caliper for that process

Don't pay Jake today! Just kidding Jake!

The Real test is putting the calipers on it 😁

Blue painters tape is the new duct tape...thousands of uses.

I love the fact that he’s working so hard that he is actually panting.

I heard Chippendale was the secret founder of this 3M conspiracy!

What happened to your regular apron? 2 videos without the regular one.

Great artskill and great patience. But why don’t you use a power planer close to the finish line then finish to the line with the hand planer. Is the result woudn’t be the same? I am wondering about the time it takes to finish a project if it takes hours just to get right a single piece of the puzzle. But I have to admit that doing things your way must be more zen and relaxing. You surely have no need for meditation sessions

Throughout this video you were planning against the top of the cathedral grain. Others have said that it is more appropriate to plane up through that grain direction. Please correct my misconception.

Woodglut comes with very useful plans with all the details you need.

I really like Rob's precision. But honestly this seems an incredibly inefficient way to thickness a piece. He planed to parallel on about 4 or 5 seperate occasions to reach his marks. He pretty much demonstrated why it's pointless to plane to parallel when you're a distance from the desired thickness: i.e. it's virtually impossible to stay parallel as you plane due to variations in grain, pressure etc. Which makes it pretty much pointless trying to get to parallel until you're close to desired thickness. The alternate method of planing a bevel on each edge down to the line and then planing the centre is so much faster.

.

So it is 1 hour of intensive labour of highly experienced woodworker to hand plane the small board? Idk, planer power tool seems a little bit faster and easier to work with

95% of the fun of hand woodworking is playing with sharp stuff. the rest is just an excuse, and coffee breaks

My adventure with woodworking started with woodglut plans.