Workbench drawers - Planing day!

After having resawn the boards to make the drawer bottom yesterday, I need now to plane them to the right thickness. I started with boards that were 1"1/2 thick that I sawn into two boards roughly more or less 11/16" thick. I need to end up with boards 1/2" thick and I have 10 of them to plane to the correct thickness. Some hours of pleasure ahead!
First step was to make a correct setup to held the board in place while planing. I do not have a real workbench with stops or hold fast yet (another project to come) so I used 2 thin scrap pieces of wood screwed on my bench top to make stops.

Bench stops setup

I started to plane the boards with my Stanley Bailey #5 to get a good flat reference face and marked the target thickness with a marking gauge and a pencil.

Thickness line marked from the flat
reference face of the board.

I then continued to use the #5 to get the board thickness down to almost 1/2" with thick shavings. Before starting each board I used a waxed rag to wipe the plane sole so it slides smoothly.

Using the #5 jack plane to get the boards down
to almost 1/2".

When I almost reached the marked line I switched to the smoothing plane, my favorite Millers Falls #9, to get down to the exact thickness.

Switching to the smoothing plane to get down to
the exact thickness.

I checked the thickness with a little caliper to be sure that I got what I needed.

Checking thickness, 1/2", right on.

Remember that I got 10 boards to plane. It was a very enjoyable moment for someone who like to make shavings but it was also quite a workout. At the end I was sweating like a pig and was totally exhausted.

All done, I deserve a fresh one now!

The whole planing process took me around 4 hours for the 10 boards and gave me a nice pile of shavings.

A nice pile of shavings.

These will be used no later than tomorrow to fire up the wood pizza oven!

Next I need to cut each board to length and to cut rabbets all around but this will be for tomorrow if I can still move my arms!