Preparing stock for glue up without a jointer

[CChar1151]

Anyone have opinions on how to prepare stock for glue up without a jointer. All opinions are appreciated. Thanks! Cary [e-mail]

[JGS]

Hi Cary, Do you have a router and a router table? If you do you can add a shim to the outfeed side of the fence and it will work using a straight bit but usually requires a bit of friggin. JG

CChar1151 wrote:

[Unisaw A100]

For edge gluing I use my table saw.

Your Mileage May Vary and you should/will need a good blade and properly tuned (blade to miter slot/fence to miter slot) saw.

UA100

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Depends on what kind of wood. True rough cut may have all sorts of twist and bends. Much of the rough cut at some places is already skip planed and the dealer will joint and edge and face for you. Then you just do the other edge on the table saw with a good blade and finish in a planer.

[pat]

A schedule and setup at the:

link.

[Zeke]

Hi Pat. I finished my version of your router table fence about a month ago. What a great fence. Thank you! One of the woodworking mags had a couple of video tips from you demonstrating the use of router sleds, and I am unable to find them anymore. Do you know if they are still online anywhere? I've built the sleds from memory and they work great, but I'd like to see the videos again. Thanks for all of your efforts. Zeke

[BillyBob]

How about a jointer plane? Of course you need a good way to hold the wood to be successful. Its takes some doing to get fully set up to joint a board by hand, but once its done, you can do things really fast on future jobs.

Bob

[charlie b]

I'm going to assume it's just getting the two edges to match up "light tight" (hold them together, hold up to the light and not see light coming through the joint) that you're asking about. A hand plane will do the job, longer edges requiring a longer plane like a #7 or #8.

If you hand plane the edges together AND orient the parts right, the edges don't have to be perfectly square to the board faces. Getting the mating pairs of edges straight isn't that hard (well maybe on a 5 or 6 foot length but a joiner might have a little trouble getting the edges straight unless the infeed and outfeed tables are pretty long). Getting the edges square is a little more difficult though Veritas makes a magnetic clip on guide that sure helps.

Check this out. It'll explain things better than "all text". Some decent illustrations are worth far more than several thousand words.

charlie b

[Upscale]

I was wondering about another method. Would putting the edges of the boards together edge to edge, fixing them in place in relation to each other and then running them through a tablesaw so the blade was in contact with both those edges at the same time. Would that work? I've seen some fine edges created with the proper table saw blade.

[Unisaw A100]

Fine Woodworking did something similar but different about

15-20 years ago. It was an article on two wavy edges that would mate up near perfectly. They worked up the edge on one piece and copy routed it to the next piece (pieces edge to edge/separated by the diameter of the bit minus a wee bit).

Mathematically it's flawed but a little glue and proper clampage and you couldn't tell. Long story short, it looks good and would seem to work for straight(ish) stock.

UA100

[Peter Mance]

I've had some good results clamping the two edges together with a straight edge then cleaning with a flush trim bit in the router (referencing the bit against the straight edge).

[George E. Cawthon]

My thought also if dealing with 3/4" material even though what I have used in the past is rather primitive for this group. Nonetheless, for softwoods, I used a radial arm saw with a Craftsman, planer blade. Always put a dado in the edge for a 1/4" x 1/2" piece of plywood, and used 2x4s across the joints to keep them flat during glue up. Worked very well as long as I was careful.

[Ed Bailen]

The Nov/Dec 1995 issue of Fine Woodworking described a jig for what you want to do on pg. 20. Thei suggestion was to prepare a piece of straight scrap a couple of feet long that is about 3/32 thinner than the width of your straight cutting router bit, and at least as wide as your straight cutting bit is long. Across the narrow edge of your scrap piece, at each end, fasten a couple of battens. The battens should stick out from the face of the scrap about 1/32" less than the router base extends from the closest edge of your straight cutting router bit.

Lay out your boards edge to edge withe the piece of scrap captured between them. Space everything up off your workbench so the battens are sitting on the faces of your wood, and the scrap is hanging between them. Slide a straight edge up to the ends of the battens and clamp everything down. Remove the jig and run your router down the straight edge. It should shave a little off both pieces of stock. If you stock has a very wavy edge, you may need to repeat the setup several times.

Regards, Ed