Am I getting ripped? Local lumber yard

[Dave]

I am a noobie, so this may be one of those dumb questions.

How much warping and twisting is acceptable from my local wood supplier? I certainly do not mind running it through the joiner and planer a couple of times. It seems that if I buy 4/4 or 5/4 lumber, at BEST I am getting 3/4" of good material.

I try to get the straightest pieces available, but still have to joint/plane quite a few times. Usually 4-5 times on joiner, then at least that many times on planer. I have Delta X5 joiner, Delta 13" planer. Experiences with b.e. maple, h. maple and cherry. I joint one edge and one flat side, rip to width, joint ripped edge and plane other flat edge.

Is this par for the course and I am just whining, or should I look for another supplier?

Drowning in sawdust, Dave

[Charlie Self]

Dave asks:

You should get 13/16", pretty near, from 4/4 stock, if you're paying premium prices.

Jointing and planing with lightweight equipment can be a real boring chore. I've had some wood so bad the ONLY way to get it jointed was to start with the table saw and a jig, or cut it in half (crosscut) to reduce the arc. But normally I buy green lumber and season it myself, so I can't complain too much.

Joint one edge but after you JOINT one side (if you can) to get it flat. Really, you're planing it, but using the jointer to flatten it. Then you can get a 90 degree square side. With fuzz and bumps, you can't.

Once that is done and the second side is planed parallel, I'd get a good 30 tooth rip blade and let the wood alone after that cut. A glue line blade will give you all the edge you need. Jointing it again can through it out of parallel with the already jointed edge.

Charlie Self "Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance." Ambrose Bierce

[Wade Lippman]

Depends on how big your lumber is, and how fussy you are. It probably takes fewer passes to get a 2' piece flat than a 10' piece, so maybe you can cut it rough size first. Sometimes you can get away with planing the first face (or at least holding it to 1 or 2 passes on the joiner), rather than joining it. It probably won't be as flat, but might not matter.

4/4 can get down to 3/4" real fast, but 5/4 shouldn't.

[George]

Grade of lumber makes a difference. Less sapwood and knots in select or better means less drying stress.

Cutting to rough length before jointing makes a difference. You can take an 8-10' board with a lot of swoop or twist and make it a non-factor by crosscutting your 2' pieces out of it, leaving the best boards for the long stuff.

Proper use of the jointer makes a difference. Sight your boards and _carefully_ slide that guard out of the way so you can place a low spot on the outfeed and trim a high. This is what people who use hand planes do, and it really helps.

Finally, you don't need a finished surface to feed your thickness planer. As long as the board will feed flat, run it. Then you can take advantage of things like disregarding an unplaned edge if you don't need the width. In any case, not screwing around looking for a surface on the jointer will give you an extra pass in your planer.

Also helps to have a hand plane, winding sticks, and a bit of instruction on how to use it, so you can knock off the worst before you even begin surfacing on the jointer.

[Pat Barber]

[Swingman]

Excellent advice. One of the most informative posts I've seen on the wREC in many a day.

[Patrick Olguin]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. Then why not just use a jack plane to quickly and safely get it close enough for the jointer? One of my best pals from high school is an EMT with more than a decade of experience. His least favorite calls (other than injured children) were shop accidents. And amongst the shop accidents, the most dreaded were those involving a jointer. A kickback from the jointer (generally caused by defeating the guard) results in the board being swifty ejected from your hands (they're being used for careful placement of the board, if I'm understanding this correctly), and then your hand can easily dive into the rotating cutter.

It happens in an instant, and according to my pal, there is a fine spray of bone, blood, cartilage and flesh that decorates the shop. They really dislike these accidents because there is nothing to take with them to the ER for attempted reattachment. Every tool deserves a certain amount of respect in the shop. The jointer is in a class all by itself. Though it is not #1 in the number of accident occurrences, a bad encounter with one is unimaginably devastating. I would have to ponder alternate ideas for a month before defeating a functioning guard on a jointer.

This is not some sky-is-falling, hand tool proselytizing flame, just some thoughts on using the right tool for the job - safely. And George is right - it works great!

BTW, an easy way to keep track of the high spots you're working on knocking down is to scribble lightly with pencil, and then plane off the pencil marks. You'll be amazed how fast it goes.

Sometimes the best thing going is a good hand job.

O'Deen

[B a r r y B u r k e J r .]

Ya' know, I've never even THOUGHT of face jointing without push blocks.

I guess I'm weird.

Barry

[Charlie Self]

Me, too. And I'll stay weird.

Charlie Self "Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance." Ambrose Bierce

[Jeff Thunder]

snip

I don't think that would be "proper use of the jointer." When I've had occassion to do things as George described, one hand is on the guard, and the other is placing the board down on the jointer, on the infeed side well down from the cutterhead. Thus, (geez, I'm sounding like a mathematician) if disaster stuck and the board was kicked back, that hand would be pushed even farther from the cutterhead.

I've always thought one of the cardinal rules (if not *the* cardinal rule) of using a jointer is to never have one's hands over the cutter head.

You don't fool me for a minute, you hand tool proselytizer, you. ;)

[Joe Zeh]

I agree with George. But I must confess that I go against the grain of tradition. Most of my projects require widths greater than 6" and I have a

6" jointer. So I plane both surfaces in the surface planer. This works well unless you have really twisted or warped pieces. So cut them to rough length first. (If they are still too warped/twisted be more careful in selection or change suppliers) You should easily get 3/4" finished dimensions from 4/4 stock. Then you can joint an edge before proceeding to the tablesaw.

Joe...

[Dave]

Thanks for the great advice!

I think maybe I need to eat some pride and get some instruction. I guess I figured having the right tools would take care of everything. While my end products have come out great, I am very slow. Probably would enjoy it more if I knew what I was doing.

Sounds like a self realization. Ya'll should have fun with that one.

One last question, should the grade of the lumber be labeled, or will I need to ask.

FYI. This place has a large stock of cherry and were selling at $3.60 bf. Again, end product was very nice.

d

[Edwin Pawlowski]

You may want to consider taking a course at an Adult Ed or Community College, or a place like Woodcraft. There are a lot of things you can figure out or learn by watching a tape or TV show. Then there are things that you can work on for a couple of hours and just not get it. Then someone with experience can show you how in just a coupe of minutes.

First step is to enjoy what you are doing. My projects are no where near the quality of the pieces I see posted by the guys here. OTOH, my audience truly appreciates what I make for them so that is all I need to keep me going and learning and getting better at it.

Second step is to learn how to fix your mistakes. If a piece is too short, just cut it again and again until it is long enough. Ed [e-mail]

[George]

May or may not be labeled. May or may not be properly labeled.

Check the hardwood grading criteria at

reality, if you see more than one knot in an 8' board, or more than 10%

4" boards, you're pretty much down to #1 common, the lowest grade you can rely on to have furniture lengths available without really searching through your stack. Only that or higher is worth storing under controlled circumstances, IMHO.

[David E. Penner]

Don't assume that your hand will be pushed back. As a rather dumb know-it-all teen-ager (yeah, I know, that's redundant) I made the mistake of trying to joint a too short piece of wood. Too much pressure on the front led to immediate kickback. The board flew out of my hand, but my hand kept moving forward; after all I HAD been pushing the board forward. The result--I've been a half finger short for the last 30 years.

David

ps. By the way, stubby fingers don't impress the women.

[George]

Redundancy, all right. Short pieces need those two-handed pushblocks. If only the kids would use 'em.

Last kid I kicked out was on his third dangerous attempt before I lost my patience. I do both IA and EMS, but I don't really care to mix 'em. If you can't help others because some moron is bound and determined to hurt himself....

[Jeffrey Thunder]

Reread what I wrote. I'm not pushing the board forward, so yes, my hand would be pushed back if the board kicked back when placing it on the jointer.

As another poster mentioned, one should use pushblocks when face jointing. Once the board is on the jointer, you can grab your pushblocks and use them. In other words, once you're pushing the board forward, you're using pushblocks.

The point I was trying to make is that it is possible to safely place the board on the jointer when doing as George described.

[MJ Wallace]

"George:

I also agree, great advice. I been taught that you need to remove the crown from boards prior to getting a good straight edge.

Dave: place the board, edge up on your joiner. See if it rocks, if so, you have a crown in the board, you got to remove it. The suggestion is to drop the crown part on the joiner, carefully!!!, and take a small pass until it stops rocking, then take a final pass. I think a good handplane would also help this and perhaps might be safer, tho, I've done the joiner procedure and still have all ten digits.

Also, Dave, check the face of your boards. Make sure you've don't have any warp or cup in them. Again, place the board on your joiner, face side down, and check to see if it rocks by pressing the back. If it does, you got to lift the back up, slightly, to take the cup out. I've used slivers as shims in the back to lift the back, so that the leading front edge is flat to the table.

I'm sure there's some book somewhere that tells you all this, but I learned in a woodworking class taught by an excellant instructor.

What area of the country are you in?

MJ Wallace

[Silvan]

Wow... Food for thought. Probably just as well I can't afford and don't have room for a jointer then.

Though I do hope to acquire a #7 or #8 soon...

Prevert.

[Keith Carlson]

A sobering thought, indeed.

Patrick, maybe I'm dense, but I'm trying to understand your point about the guard. Do you really mean that the kickback is *caused* by the guard not being used? Or that the hand diving into the cutter is because the guard's off?

Assuming it's the latter, I'm also wondering if most blade guards on jointers return fast enough to protect in that situation. If you were pushing with your leading hand say 6 inches from the cutterhead, and the board kicked backward out of your hands, your hands continue moving forward of their own momentum....... is the guard going to close before your hand reaches the cutterhead?

I know mine is nowhere near that fast. Could be that I need to pre-tension the spring more.