Workbench Wednesday – Truing The JN Planing Beam

It’s been more than six months since I put this project aside (not my longest hiatus for sure — my Ultimate Portable Workbench project has been dormant and partially assembled for several years now) and the time has come to move it forward.  The Japanese planing beam is something I have wanted since first reading Toshio Odate’s book more than four decades ago (!), and more recently inspired by Adrian Preda’s video from three years ago.

Given the many moons of settling and relaxing it was time to true the beam and remove the 1/16″ of wind it had from one end to the other.  Since I am all about cultural appropriation I appropriated Roubo’s technology for flattening stock, beginning with his winding sticks on stilts.

Using my shoulder plane I shot declining rabets on the necessary opposite sides until the winding sticks aligned.  This picture is just a stroke away on each rabet to be done.

Using my #5 set up as a foreplane to work off of the tapered rabets I got the beam flat in a few minutes.  With that done I rotated the beam 90-degrees in both directions and used a cabinetmaker’s square to square up those edges.  I did nothing to the underside.

Up next — working on the ~400-pound bolt into the base.