Pretend for a moment that someone was just dropped into a situation where they had nearly everything you could ever hope for available, and very little clue how to use most of it. Now assume they've learned relatively quickly, and are turning out some pretty nice work, but still haven't done a whole lot with ye olde jointer. What would you tell them about the jointer as a rough introduction, designed to pique the interest in this fine machine, and encourage this eager newcomer to absorb knowledge and experiment? What sort of uses are there, what are things to look for in a jointer, etc... be creative!
****************************************************************************************************** Steps for truing stock.
Absolutely necessary. A flat face to work from.
Joint (make flat and straight) one face (reference face) so you have something to true (reference) the remaining three sides to. Not to be done on a planer because the feed rollers will push out any warp and it will reappear as the stock exits the planer. For the same reason use very little down force when jointing.
Joint one edge with the reference face against the jointers fence. This will give you a straight edge that is at 90 degrees to the reference face. Also an edge to reference the next edge.,
Rip a second edge on the table saw with the reference face against the table and the reference edge against the fence. Try to do it on the jointer and it will give you a straight edge but not one necessarily parallel to the first edge.
Now you can plane the piece to a proper thickness with the reference face flat down on the planers feed table. Since the reference face is flat the planer has no warp to press out so the face being planed will be not only be flat but parallel to the reference face.
The jointer performs the two most critical steps in the process (the reference face and edge) but, with sufficient dicking around, there are work arounds. but, without the dicking around, the planer will not perform the functions of a jointer and the jointer will not perform the functions of a planer.
Speaking of jointers, has anybody tried making extension tables? I've got the typical 6" Jet with a 48-or-so inch long table. I often have to joint longer boards and it's a pain in the neck (not to mention rather inaccurate) trying to cantilever them off the ends of the tables. I'm thinking of two possible plans to fix this.
One is just extension tables, about 18-24 inches long, built of 3/4 birch ply bolted to the side flanges of the existing table castings.
The more adventurous plan is to build the jointer right into a table top. I'm thinking a long bench along one wall of my shop, 18-24 inches wide, with a miter saw, router table, 12" planer, and jointer all built right into the surface. Dust collection and power along the back wall. Seems it would give me a really long working surface for all four machines in the least amount of floor space. I can see a couple of minor problems:
1) In theory, I need to adjust the height of the table to track the jointer tables. On the other hand, I rarely adjust the infeed table, and havn't touched the outfeed since I set the machine up the first time, so maybe it's just not an issue.
2) Making all the machines have a common table height will either make the miter saw uncomfortably low, or the jointer uncomfortably high.
Anybody ever done anything like this? How did it work out?
hm, well, what do you do if your stock is wider than your jointer? just rip the rough stock down first?
We have an odd jointer, I can't find a name anywhere on it, but the table is 8" wide by 36" long... seems uncomfortably short compared to some of the ones I've seen and heard about... seems like very little of the big iron in the shop has brand names on it, wonder why that is :P Anyway, I have some short cherry boards that I was gonna use for aprons for an end table, but they have some wicked twist to them, so I milled up another piece I found for them, maybe I'll mess around with the jointer by trying to take the twist out of the boards :) (Yes I have a planer as well... like I said, I now have all the stuff that'd make some of the guys here cry, but I'm less than expert with it all)
The jointer is an essential tool for furniture making. And, yes, if your stock is too wide, you rip, joint, and then edge join it back together. Jointed edges glue up without joinery (long grain to long grain).
36" is indeed short but you should still be able to joint a 6' board. Beyond that, look into extending the beds.
Nope. I remove the "ledge" with a handplane after each pass over the jointer. I'll only rip and reglue if I have some reason to believe the board will be unstable otherwise.
A tip given in one of the WW magazines goes as follows:
1) Rabbet the board as wide as possible - about 6" on a six inch jointer.
2) place the rabbeted surface on a piece of 1/4" ply (sled) and run through your thickness planer.
3) flip the board over and run through the thickness planer to flatten the rabbetted side.
This should work for boards up to 8" or 9" wide on a 6" jointer.
Note; If I have to use a twisted board, a thing I avoid at all costs but sometimes it happens, and can't cut them to a shorter length to cut down on the twist I find that doing a little work with a hand plane before taking the piece to the jointer makes the job much easier.
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