When you cut wood the long way, it’s called milling. You need
specialized equipment to mill the right way.
I can’t justify buying a jointer and planer. I do, however, have a circular saw and low standards. So, I decided to see how bad it would be if I did it this way.
The end result is bad, as expected! My circular saw can’t make it to the midpoint of the width of this board, so after running it on both edges, I had to get the middle with a handsaw. The cuts were quite jagged, so I can to do a little chiseling and sanding to even get it to the state shown in the last picture.
However, I’m just making a crude approximation of a storage box I saw at Muji. With these boards, it will be even cruder. “Rustic,” even.
I could have bought lumber for this, but I refuse to do that when I have years-old scrap wood at home. It’s not even about the cost. (Wood is still really expensive, though.) I hate the idea that this wood could end up never being used for anything just because its dimensions’ are not quite right. (This is also partly why I painted the shoe rack shelves yellow. We have a bunch of paint samples sitting around.)
When you cut wood the long way, it’s called milling. You need specialized equipment to mill the right way.