Jointing Question

[stoutman]

I am making the top for a hall table and the boards I bought today are both

9.5" wide. The top needs to be 14.5" wide.

If I am going to face joint the lumber, here is the problem: My jointer is only 6" wide so ideally I would have liked to have purchased three 5" wide boards, but didn't think about that at the lumber store.

Now I am stuck with the possibility of having to split the two 9.5" wide boards and join 4 to make the top. I don't wanna do that.

Can I face join half the board and flip it around to do the other side? I would have to remove the cutter guard, and say a prayer, but...

Can it be done?

[tom]

Yes. Carefully. _Light_ cuts. You may need lots of finesse (and thicker stock), but you set the fence back a little more than 1/2 the width of your stock, and keep checking your progress. Put it through a thickness planer or sneak up on the difference with a hand plane. Watch that cutterhead! But what's so hard about rip and glue? You'd probably save in stock thickness. Tom

[David]

you COULD if the wood isn't tearout prone (I say that because you MUST run the other half in the opposite direction to the first cut).

Dave

[David]

personally, my solution would be rip and glue.

Dave

[stoutman]

Is birds eye maple tear out prone??

I thought the grain pattern would flow better if I had two glue ups instead of four. But maybe that is the way to go.

[RonB]

lf in the opposite direction to the first cut).

I agree with rip and glue. There is an outside chance you might save yourself a little cupping problem in the future (But that is a whole separate subject).

RonB

[stoutman]

I thought the grain pattern (birds eye maple) would flow better if I had two glue ups instead of four, but you make a good point about cupping over time.

thanks!

[stoutman]

It's possible I'm being a little silly, but I thought the two glue ups versus 4 would look nicer because the (birds eye maple) figure would flow better.

I think I will probably end up ripping and jointing 4-boards.

Thanks

[CW]

Does it have any obvious problems that make face jointing necessary? Are they cupped and/or bowed appreciably? If not, skip the jointer and plane them.It seems to be popular these days to say you have to joint everything, that the planer won't help. That's BS. If the wood is strait enough to go through the planer without rocking, you will be fine. I don't own a jointer. Have never felt a big need (though I have used them). If it rocks when you set it on the bench, take down the high spots with a plane. Perfectly flat is NOT necessary.

[stoutman]

They dont appear to be. The planer should remove any mild cupping, but not any bowing.?. If there is mild bowing it might be straigtened when fastened to the table frame. But this might put stress on the frame (tweak alignment) and cause the four legs not to touch the floor level.

[Luigi Zanasi]

On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 00:39:05 GMT, "stoutman" scribbled:

Bird's *invented* tearout. :-(

Scraping and sanding after using an extremely sharp hand plane and wetting it down is the only way to go, IME. YMMV.

Luigi Replace "nonet" with "yukonomics" for real email address

[CW]

Sight down the length of the board. Is it strait? You can see amazingly small variations. If you see any problems, plane (hand) off the high spots. If it is as strait as you can see and it tweaks anything, your structure has other problems.

[Robatoy]

Or use a drumsander as a thicknesser.

[David]

what other functions does a drum sander have, other than as a thicknesser? :)

Dave

[Robatoy]

One of my suppliers, a very large factory where they make kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors, they use drum sanders in the initial stages of finishing completed doors before they go through the TimeSavers for the finer grits.

Another fellow I know uses a drum sander to take the glazing off freshly planed maple boards.... again, surface treatment, not dimensioning.

Does that answer your question, Dave?

[tSp]

I have seen various articles on the net about using a router as a jointer for wide boards. Off the top of my head, I believe it is a basic frame that surrounds the wood to be planed. The frame is obviously perfectly flat. The router is then used as a jointer by riding on the frame and removing the high spots.

[john]

Heck, I just clamp a piece of angle aluminum to the underside of the board in question, then use a bearing router bit to use the aluminum as the guide and router it

John

[John Girouard]

I believe the OP is talking about face jointing, rather than edge jointing.

-John