11 jointing edges of stiles and rails

In this video I want to show you how to joint the edges of materials that you'll be using for stiles and rails

This applies for the face frames of the cabinets as well as the door parts

In all likelihood you'll be using ready milled lumber. This is standard three-quarter inch thick pine

It's actually a little bit thinner than three-quarters. They don't always give us our money's worth from the mills

But the important thing to note here is that both sides are already smooth

The usual jointer procedure is to joint one face first and then an edge

But we're already as thin as we can afford to be so we don't have any extra wood to joint on the face

But luckily that doesn't matter in this case because the wood is going to be flat enough

You're going to choose relatively flat wood. And it's also thin stock so if there is any deviation it will be pulled tight and straight when you do installations

So the first thing to do is to check to see that your jointer fence is actually square to the bed of the jointer

I always use a machinist square for a job like this. It's much more accurate than the wood and metal tri-squares that are used

They can be out significantly but this is guaranteed to be accurate to a couple of thousandths of an inch over the length of the blade

So you just put it against the fence and you're looking for a no gap situation of course

It's not unusual for a fence to be accurate, to be adjusted accurately at one end

And to be a little bit out at the other. This fence is pretty good

If you've got a big problem with that you can use double-sided tape to put some hardwood, a layer of hardwood on the fence

And then you actually joint the fence, the wood of the fence, on your jointer and that can make it true

The main thing to understand when you're jointing wood like this is you want to start with, if at all possible, a concave edge

Some edges are going to be humped up and others are going to have a kind of a hollow in them

Some boards might have neither problem but if you have a choice you want to start jointing a concave edge

And the way you do that is by placing the wood against the fence

The main thing is that the face of the board be tight to the fence as it goes across

So I'm not running the motor right now but my main concern is to hold the wood tight to the fence

Now in this particular case there's a bit of a bow in this board. That's not a problem. That will straighten out when we install it

So you need to be a little forgiving of yourself. There might sometimes be a little gap there

But if it's caused by a bow then that's no problem. And if wood is short as the styles and rails you're dealing with, that's probably going to take just one pass to do the work that you need

And I'll fire up the jointer now and show you how it works in real life

There we go. Now we're smooth at this stage

The jointer has made a continuous cut. There's fresh wood all along the length

And just as a final check, I want to use my machinist's square again to make sure that it really is square all the way along

With wood this narrow it almost always works just fine. But it's good to check because you need that foundation of a square edge to continue