Joint the Unjointables 4 simple ways to work around your

By Jim Harrold B efore starting any project, techniques to rehabilitate these This consists of a base and you first have to prepare your “unjointables” and turn shop a bridge. To make the base you stock. You know the : flatten Face-jointclutter into shop big projects. boards can screw into, simply a face, to thickness, joint an with a a piece of ¾" MDF or edge, rip to width, joint the sawn to your benchtop. Place the edge, and, finally, cut to length. workpiece on the base and Since the first face and edge While face- boards of serve as reference for every other average size poses no problem if step, getting them right matters. you own a jointer and a planer, Bowl bit Typically, flattening and extra wide stock does. Sometimes straightening is done at the you can’t bear to rip the wide jointer, but special cases come stock, such as a treasured piece along. How, for instance, do you of crotch walnut, into narrower safely and successfully joint a widths to fit a 6" jointer. And you board that measures a meager surely don’t want to up a big The fl at bott om and radiused 12" in length, or one that’s too slab set aside for a rustic bench. edges of this 11/4"-diameter bowl wide for your planer, or a piece For oversized stock, turn bit (Woodcraft #24B86) make it of wild-grained that to your router, a dishing an effi cient wide-board surfacer. tears as you machine it? Over bowl bit, and a simple jig, 64the next woodcraftmagazine.com few pages, you’ll learnFeb/Mar 2010like the one shown above. Flattening A tack it down with a few screws The rails-and-bridge surfacing technique can be easily adapted angled through each end. Insert to flatten and/or restore the top of your workbench benchtop. wedges between the workpiece To set the rails, first screw a pair of 2 × 4" cleats to the bottom and base to keep the stock from edges of the benchtop as shown. Next set the rails perfectly parallel to rocking while you’re routing. each other and to the bench. Start by leveling your workbench across Make a pair of rails about 8" its top. (If the benchtop is twisted, strike an average.) Next, screw to 10" longer and ½" wider than one rail to its cleat and use the thickness of the board you clamps to temporarily hold plan to surface. (Joint the rails the other in place. Using a straight because any inaccuracy level laid across the two rails, will telegraph to the workpiece.) adjust the clamped rail until Attach a ¾ × 1" cleat to each rail. it sits level with the other. Do Now screw the rail assemblies this in several locations and to the base, leaving a 2" to recheck. Once you positioned 3" gap between the rails and the clamped rail, screw it in workpiece so that the router place, remove the clamps, bit can enter and exit the cut and start jointing the surface. without chewing up the rails. Finally, build the bridge. The bridge, which rides atop the rails, amounts to nothing more than an extra long router bottom, so that the cutterhead prevent at workpiece ends. base. The overall length of can flatten the top face. With To mount the outriggers, clean the bridge needs to be twice short boards, the outriggers up the edge of the board with the distance in between the “stretch” the stock’s length to a hand plane, jointer, or table rails. The width of the bridge safely feed it through a planer. saw enough to make a passable is determined by the base size Make the outriggers out of glue joint. If necessary, position of your router. Use ½" plywood 3" stock sized 1/4" a few wood strips underneath for the bottom and screw on taller than the thickness of the thePhoto board A to center it on the 1 × 3" hardwood rails to form board to be jointed. For pieces outriggers during glue-up the sides. This combination of wood less than 12" in length, ( ). This ensures that the makes the bridge strong cut the outriggers 18" long to outriggers are in full contact enough to resist any flexing. To use the face-jointing jig, set your router bit to a depth of 1/8" and methodically work back and forth, taking full- width cuts. Listen to your router and don’t overtax it. It will take time but a flat-jointed face will begin to appear. Sand the resulting surface Face-jointwith a random-orbit smaller . boards with a planer

Outriggers are simply wood A strips glued to the edges of the Shim the workpiece so that the planer’s infeed and outfeed workpiece. With a wide board rollers reference against the outriggers. Use a flat work that exceeds the capacity of your surface to ensure that the strips are parallel. jointer, the outriggers establish aPhotos: flat referenceBill Hopkins face along the Feb/Mar 2010 woodcraftmagazine.com 65 with the bed of the and not a warped corner or bowed face of the board. (If the board is cupped, orient the cup upward for the same reason.) Most importantly, use a flat reference surface such as the cast- iron top of your table saw when gluing up to make sure that the B outriggers are perfectly parallel. Outriggers make your planer think your stock is flatter than it is. Remove PhotoRun the B outrigger and board the strips from long boards before the opposite face. If the combination through the planer stock is shorter than 12", keep the strips attached to prevent kickback. ( ), using light cuts, so the pressure of the feed rollers doesn’t press down and distort the board. With longer stock, saw off the outriggers once you establish a jointed face, and plane the opposite face. When face-jointing short boards, I remove the outriggers after planing the second face. At this point, the thin strips aren’t working to keep the piece flat, but help prevent Shootkickback the and edgesreduce snipe.of short stock with a plane C By keeping the plane perpendicular to the work, this long Manufacturers warn against shooting boards does for edges what shorter shooters do for running stock less than 12" in ends. Just make sure that the blade is to the side. length across a jointer. The end of a short board can unexpectedly Figure 1: Shooting Board tip into the cutterhead, causing a dangerous situation. Thankfully, you have a safe alternative—a hand plane. One of the challenges of jointing with a hand plane is producing an edge that is consistently 90° to the face. The shooting board solves this challenge by maintaining that relationship. The plane rides on its side along the base of the jig as you hold the stockPhoto being C jointed against a stop on the table board as shown in . Of course you’ll need to “arm” your shooting board with the properly sized hand plane. A rule of thumb is that a plane can 66 woodcraftmagazine.com Feb/Mar 2010 joint a board that’s two to two and a halfFigure times the 1 length of the sole. For the shooting board shown in , I used a No. 5 because it has length and mass Edge-jointfor smooth and tough accurate boards jointing. with a table saw

Sometimes my hand plane and jointer can’t make the cut when they encounter tough, gnarly wood or a severely irregular edge. For those times, I rely onPhoto a table D saw, a jointing sled, and the right saw blade as shown in . A jointing sled works by holding the board tightly in place and allowing the table saw to cut a straight and accurate edge on the board as the edge of the sled registers off the saw’s . To prevent splintering on the board’s lower edge, set the table saw’s fence so that the saw blade rips a whisper off the jointing sled. Once you establish the good edge, remove the board from the jig and the jig from the saw D table, and then rip the remaining Use a jointing sled and your table saw to cut clean accurate edges edge with the board’sFigure good2 edge on tough-grained boards, and, when needed, to remove wane. running against the fence. As shown in , the jig Figure 2: Table Saw Jointing Sled consists of a carrier board, an adjustable fence, toggle-clamp hold-downs1/4 (#143933), 5/16"-18 five-star knobs (#142224), and " T-track (#149081). If you let the ends of the board extend past the jig ends, you can use the jig with boards measuring as long as 5'. The adjustable fence allows you to joint board widths up to 11" on the table saw. With a well-adjusted saw, you’ll be able to make a straight cut with any blade, but if you want a glue-up-ready edge, you’ll need the right blade. A premium- quality combination blade such as the Forrest 40T Woodworkern II ATB sawblade (#85N52) will do the trick quite nicely. Feb/Mar 2010 woodcraftmagazine.com 67 FREE YEAR! 2 YEARS for $29.99!

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