Over the last week and a half, I have begun working on a built-in cabinet for our living room. This has been the largest and most daunting project I've taken on to date. Planing 12" wide by 8' long boards is no easy task, and is made especially more challenging when you have a 7' workbench. Notice the pile of shavings building up on the floor (sorry for the blurry picture). This isn't even half of them.
The challenge here is moving the boards more than anything. Planing them isn't difficult, just time consuming. In my case I would plane 2/3 of the board, then shift it down on the bench and plane the other third since the board is a full 12" longer than my bench. The benefit of doing this by hand, however, (in addition to the cardio workout) is that there is no need to plane both faces before you glue up your panel. This is possible to do with power tools too, you just have to think outside the box.
In the case of these two panels, the side facing out is planed, the side facing the wall is still in the rough. Working this way saves a lot of time. Why plane both sides twice? I planed one face of the 12" wide board, then planed one face of the 8" wide board. The two flat planed faces were placed together and the mating edges of the boards were match planed (planed together at the same time). This results in complimentary angles when the boards are mated and all but gaurantees a flat glue-up. Once the glue has dried, some light planing cleans up the first face and then the panel is flipped and the rough face of the panel is planed.
Even panels this size, while difficult to move around, can be sucessfully glued up with minimal fuss using this technique. The added benefit is less planing and you also save final panel thickness as you are not planing away any more material than necessary. I don't know what the final thickness of these panels will be, but I don't really care. It will not be important in the final piece.
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