Am I getting ripped? Local lumber yard

[Silvan]

The trick is never show your work to someone who's a better woodworker than you are... :)

[Dave]

MJ:

Thanks for the tips. I seem to do ok with cupping and crowning. I have the most trouble with a twisted board. Cannot do anything with a joiner. I have been taking a piece of melamine, laying the twisted board on it, shimming the gaps and running through the planer. Tedious, and I need a hot glue gun for shims, but appears to work. Does this sound right?

Richmond, Va.

dave

[Patrick Olguin]

You're not dense. I just didn't offer a decent illustration ;).

Two typical ways to lose fingers in a jointer -

1. You're holding the guard open to lower a board onto it, and you're leaning a bit towards the cutter with the rear hand (most likely right). The board kicks back, and since you haven't let go of the guard yet, the hand that was once holding the board goes into the exposed cutter head.
2. You're jointing a short board, and it won't quite work with push blocks and the guard, so you eschew the push blocks. Board kicks back and disappears behind you while your hand goes into the cutter head.

Pretty much short boards and a power jointer don't go well together. Plus, it's really easy to flatten a small board with a hand plane, irrespective of one's view on Zen and the art of hand tools.

O'Deen

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

I'm still lost.

Lower a board onto a jointer? Why? I always slide the board across the infeed table, across the spinning blades, right onto the outfeed table. This is always done with push blocks, unless I'm edge jointing. When edge jointing it's quite easy to keep a good, safe grip on the work, but even then I never lower a board onto the cutter head.

If it's too short for blocks, it's too small for the tool.

Do people do this stuff on purpose? Is there some technique I'm missing?

Barry

[Tom Watson]

If you have a longish sorta board with a big crook in it, the leading edge of the board may come at the cutter at too steep an angle to run the board through all at once. If you ran it through you might chunk out the leading part of the board.

You may have to set the board down with the cutter beneath the mid point of the concavity of the board's edge and joint down the trailing part of the board first.

Regards, Tom Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania

[George]

However, with any semblance of intelligence, you lay the board on top of the guard, then, while holding the part of the board which will rest on the outfeed table lightly to same with your block, you slide the guard out of the way from under it, never revealing the cutters.

For jointing short stock, or even surfacing, a two-handed push block (like a plane with a heel to hook the aft edge) will allow full control of both direction and, as it is able to butt into it, the guard.

[Patrick Olguin]

Ok, I can see that. It just really gives me, personally, the heebeegeebees. I'll attribute it to my own jointer issues.

Note - intelligence in the shop is greatly reduced by fatigue, hunger and deadlines.

Back to the main topic - if you're shopping at one of those hardwood boutiques, you ought to be able to carefully hand-select your boards. I know I always do, and I've never had a problem. I carefully restack everything, and if a questioning employee comes around, I remark how beautfiul the board (I'm rejecting) is, but note that it's just not quite what I'm looking for. It helps if you're loading close to every other board on your cart, as opposed to rifling the whole stack.

O'Deen

[Scott Brownell]

I've done this to taper a leg such as in a shaker style sofa table. It is a common practice. The first time might seem scary but once you've passed that it's really easy. Begin with a light cut, once that's made you can increase the cut until you're ready to make the final light cut. You're just establishing an angle with the first cut.

Scott

[Silvan]

Considering how much trouble I have coping with even marginal geometry problems in a board, and considering how much more they're charging compared to those mail order places, I make no apologies for getting out and looking at every single piece of whatever lumber in the entire rack if I have to. Usually takes me a couple hours to buy a few bf of lumber, but now that I know what to avoid in the first place, I'm having much better success making it into stuff that doesn't do bad things.

[Michael Dembroge]

I'd like to add that the re-stacking is the important part. I bought a bunch of 4/4 birch from MacBeath's in Berkeley once, and they gave me a $.50/b.f. discount because I restacked the pile so neatly. That's what he said anyways. The clerk was very appreciative & remarked how often people rifle through the piles & just leave them.

A construction lumber yard in our area was a different story. A guy just about ripped me to pieces when I was rejecting some 2x6 redwood because it had gouges taken out where the shipping straps cut into them. He was pissed! I still stacked everything nice & neat when done, but that didn't matter to this guy.

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

Ok, that would make sense.

The reason why it didn't initially make sense to me is that I'll usually save a longish board with a big crook for short parts.

Thanks, Barry

[stickdoctorq]

mike [e-mail] (Michael Dembroge) wrote in news: [e-mail]: \

He probably marked you as a noob he could unload bad stuff on when you came in and was pissed because you weren't.

Screw him. I agree with what others say....if the quality of the lumber/product is crap or affected by handling, we are under no obligation whatsoever to just settle for it....