If you really wanna do it yourself. Delta makes a 13" plainer for about $400 (or less). Good joiners can run as much. If your in the U.S., hit 'www.pricegrabber.com' and look for reconditioned ones. Although most of the plainers I saw were for 12 1/2".

If you have the muscle, you can dress the planks by hand with a scrub plane, #4 smoothing plane, and #6 or 7 jointer plane.

Do some research before deciding on a finish. Purpleheart can take a colour from magenta-red to purple to greyish brown, depending on finish and exposure to light/air. Start with the link below.

gar.

• http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/

Purple heart is a brilliant purple but will too soon turn bery dark and even brown in short time. any oils finish will darken the wood and with UV will turn very dark. If the bright purple is what you want to keep. Water based polyurathane will impart the least coloration. The water poly is a bad choice for figured woods since it wont bring out grain like other finishes. If you want to keep maple or oak bright, white and clear its a great choice. Extreamly durable. Look for a water poly with UV protection. The sunlight is the deal killer here.

I used to put a few coat of Armorall under the finish coat on padauk and purple heart to keep their color. Another trick is to stain or glaze the wood with its own color. you dont change anything, but it stays the same. For purple your going to need analyn dye or china pigments in a glaze. All of its lots of work and you'll need to do more reading on the topics if you choose that rout.

Bill, what did you finish coat with after armoralling the padauk? I have a couple of 8 x 6's of padauk and purpleheart I've been saving to do amp chassis' with. I made a heaphone rack out of purpleheart and padauk where I dyed the purpleheart, but left the padauk alone and finshed with about 8 coats of Formby's Tung Oil.

I was looking for a way to keep that bright orange red in padauk long after the top coat. A friend told that this armor-all was a polymer and would help block out UV and keep the color of the wood.
I tried it and I was only able to see this project for about a year after and it looked fine to that point. In the 80's when this was done I was shooting Sherwin Wiliams, Water White lacquer.