DIY Truing Stock for the Cheap

>>1159357
You can use hand planes.. But it just takes a long ass time. Especially if you have a shit wood that likes to blow out or has lots of knots.

I need to get a thickness planer myself too. Sucks not having one.

you're fucked

>>1159359
Hand planes? Is there a way I can ensure it will be square?

>>1159364
Winding sticks. + your eyeballs.

>>1159357
If it's small enough you can do it on a table saw.

The biggest hurdle is making the first cut true, once you have that the rest is easy. I've even made square stock from round poles, just takes practice.

>>1159357
>table saws

There are jigs you can make that let you joint stock. The jig is basically half of a crosscut sled and some clamps or just straight up nails to secure the stock. Run the side facing away from the jig, that gives you your reference face that you then put against the rip fence to joint the opposite face. Do 2 small crosscuts using the same jig or a miter gauge/jig to get the other faces.

I saw a guy who also made table saw jig to do planing but it seemed like an incredible pain in the ass and you might as well just save up for a used planer on craigslist at that point.

>>1159364
Yes, jigs. So first off, hardwood bodied hand planes are just as good/durable as modern style steel ones, the steel ones are better because they're easier to make standardized in a factory (instead of each shop making their own), and if you drop one off a building you're working on, you can put it in a vice and hammer it fairly true again before truing the bottom with glass and sandpaper, without removing a ton of material.

Not having a screw adjust for depth of cut sucks ass though, imo.

But little known fact, classic carpenters jointer was long as fuck, and was often mounted in a vice or on a stand and stock run across it rather than the other way.
so once you use a jointer plane (seriously, like 48" a lot of them), you can put it on the table and clamp rails to it the height of the stock you want, and use a smoothing/jack plane at like a 30 degree angle (so it sits on the rails but is mostly aligned with the grain) to plane it down so that the top is at the thickness you want it (rails) and coplanar with the bottom.
Edges are easy, just use a jointer plane with a fence to keep it at 90 degrees to the face.
To make true stock, rule of thumb is that a plane can flatten material up to 3x it's length. so you make a 2" wood chamfer plane, a 6" smoothing plane, a 12" jack plane, and a 24" and 48" jointer plane (the small one with a handle, the big one to be clamped in a vice).

If you've got a good tablesaw that doesn't vibrate and put a nice sharp blade in it, then a quick sacrificial fence and featherboard and you can joint anything up to the depth of cut.

winding sticks really do help you figure out if you are getting a twist in the board.

I've seen a fair number of people go with a diy drum sander rather than a thickness planer. You can also use planes to surface wood rather than a jointer planer, but winding sticks tell if you're putting a twist on it.
The clamping force will straighten a twist and keep it from getting fixed in thickness planer

A router is great for edge joining if you have one of those. You can do it on a router table with a fence or freehanded with a guided bit. I use a Whiteside 1 1/2" flush trim bit with a piece of laminated MDF from an old bookshelf as a straightedge, taking off a small bit at a time.

>>1161192
Would not recommend doing it freehand , too easy to jiggle and put a little wave/curve in your cut. But you can absolutely make a freehand fence and then you'll basically have a mini power planer.

>>1161421
Oh wait, nvm, I agree that you can use do the suggested action. I would go with a pattern bit instead of a flush trim (bearing is at the base of router bit instead of end) so you don't have to make a full depth cut.
You can also thickness with a router sled and rails, that's how I leveled the tops of a pair of stumps to make a table with

>>1159357
What stock are we talking about, OP, and for what purpose? In general you've been given good advice here, but if you think you're going to true basically any dimensional lumber from a box store and have it stay trued, you're fooling yourself.

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>>1159374
This, if you're clever you can make a table saw jig to make it act like a jointer. as for thickness planer you don't really need one right away you can easily cut down stock to whatever thickness you're looking for with a bandsaw or even a table saw if you're really damn careful about it. Truth be told, I don't own a planer, jointer, nor a bandsaw and I can still make neat useful shit (see pic)

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>>1161515
also this

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>>1161515
>>1161517
and while we're at it this, gotta show off my work sometimes.

>>1161422

What kind of bit did you use for surfacing with a router? I've tried that with a wide bowl bit and it did a good job, curious to see what somebody else has used as well. I've seen those "bottom cleaning" bits recommended as well.

>>1161572
I just used a straight bit. it turned out so so, a fair number of burn mark circles, but no big deal because I just needed the top an bottom reasonably level and coplanar.
Also, I think the real issue was that I didn't keep it in motion, because the rails I made were just some boards clamped together, so they did shift a bit, and I ended up pausing instead of keeping my router in constant motion. Abt 1/8" passes, took me a while because I ended up having to remove abt 1.5" of log on each side to end up with a flat coplanar surface.

Also, endgrain