Yes I know you can do it Jay. We are looking for effeciencies though as we have at least three frames here to do that we'd like closed in to the weather before next winter. I have about 130 reclaim beams here in my shed, and I'll have to order a bunch more too. I have a few that have as much as 1.5" of twist which is not insignificant. If it were a stand along post, I could layout as you said. But if it's to be part of a wall or have cabinets meet up to it or something, it would make life easier to be square. Plus it's really neat using this machine!!!
Dave, a buddy and I spent 3 months de-nailing all 130 timbers. We worked every other day to give our bodies a chance to recover. De-nailing, especially hardwood, will take a lot out of you. These contained broken off screws, all sizes of nails, lags, staples, carpet tacks and some hardware we never could identify. We got pretty good at it. We will be wand'ing every face again before we run the beam planer over it. No doubt we will his something. I'm going to have backup knives ready. By the way, I'm going to have a de-nailing video coming up from all that work showing he techniques we learned.