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So in this video I want to give you a few things to think about in terms of the jointer
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And that's what this machine is here. Now this is a stationary floor mounted jointer and it's not something that very many beginners begin with
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But the bench top jointer, much smaller, more reasonably priced, portable, storable
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that's something that you might want to look at. You can get them for the high $200s, maybe between $300 and $400
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The value that a bench top jointer provides is enormous. And this is not going to be a video on everything to do with using a jointer
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because you don't need to know that right now. But I just want to show you the value of a bench top jointer and what you can do with it
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Now I don't have a bench top jointer anymore. I used to have one. Built a lot of furniture for the house
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Ended up giving that jointer away when I got this one. The techniques, the issues, the approaches are exactly the same
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regardless of what kind of jointer you're using. So most beginners end up buying pre-planed lumber
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So that's lumber that's already smooth and it's ready to use. The problem is that the edge, so this is the face of a board, this is the edge of a board
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The edges of boards, even when they've been planed, at a sawmill somewhere and sold as planed on all four sides and ready to use
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the edges are not all that accurate. Now why does that matter
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Well, it matters whenever you have to glue boards together on edge
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It also matters a great deal when you're making a face frame for the opening of a cabinet, for instance
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and the horizontal members need to join accurately with the vertical members
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For instance, if the edge of the vertical member is not square and true
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then you're not going to be able to get a very good joint there. So refining the edges of pieces of wood, that's the main use for a jointer
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It's not the only use. There's more extensive things you can use it for
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but the little bench top jointers that I'm recommending to you in this course, that's their main use
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And I've chosen a board here which is kind of wonky, exceptionally wonky on its edge, just to show you what's going on
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So let's take a look. Look at how unsquare that is. That's very unsquare
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Not only is it unsquare, but let's see if we can get this on camera
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When I look at the board this way, can you see that it's dished
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It goes down in the middle. That's actually a fairly common flaw in the edges of boards
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and it will cause you some grief if you need to rely on that edge
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gluing to another piece of wood on its edge to make a wider piece of wood
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or as I said, face frames on cabinets, style and rail frames around raised panel doors
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Having crisp edges is going to help you a lot. It's going to crispen up your work quite a bit too, just overall
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So what the jointer does is it planes away wood. And you see here, this is what's called the cutter head, and it revolves
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It turns this way at high speed. That's the blade there. And so it removes wood from, it removes material from the wood you're jointing
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Now this is called a fence. There's a lot of things in woodworking called fences
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You remember the router table fence, and I mentioned the table saw fence. Well, this is a jointer fence
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And during use, you always, when you're jointing an edge, you always hold the wood tight to the fence
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We don't really care what it's doing underneath. We don't want to, that's the way this piece of wood lies naturally
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Look, it's tight at the fence. It's tight to the fence at the bottom
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But look at all that gap up there at the top. We don't want to let the bed tell us how to hold the wood when we're jointing an edge
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We want the fence to dictate that. So during use, you're going to see me doing this
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during use I'm going to be holding this snugly into the fence
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as I slide it over the spinning blade. In order for that operation to actually bear the kind of fruit we want
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the fence needs to be square to the bed. So that's something you want to check
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And that's where the machinist's square comes in. I've introduced this to you before
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Very accurate. And you can rely on this. I would not use any other kind of square for this setup operation
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Not the combination square, not any of the other woodworking squares. But, look at that. Nice
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That fence is adjusted properly. The thing about jointer fences is that sometimes they can have a little twist in them too
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They're not necessarily flat along their length, so you really want to check for square at both sides, both ends of the fence
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And if there's a problem, you kind of have to split the difference so that there's a little bit of error on one side and a little bit of error on the other
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This fence happens to be pretty good. I did work in a fancy shop one time
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They had a great big jointer, much bigger than this, but the fence was twisted
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So what they did was, they used a double-sided tape to put a thin layer of hardwood on the fence
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Then they took the fence right off the jointer and they used the jointer to make the wood of the fence flat
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That worked really well too. Luckily, we don't have to do that here
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But I'm going to put on my safety equipment now and just run this board over the jointer
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And I'm just going to make one pass. One pass will not fix the wonkiness of this edge
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but it will start to. And when it starts to, I want to show it to you
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so you can see that the jointer takes off more wood where it needs to
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and less or no wood where it doesn't need to until the edge is perfectly straight and square
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My guess is that it might take three or four passes to refine this edge to the point where we can actually use it
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Let's just do the one and we'll see what it looks like. We're starting to get some nice, even edges
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We're going to start to get some nice, even edges. We're going to start to get some nice, even edges
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We're going to start to get some nice, even edges. We're going to start to get some nice, even edges
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We're going to start to get some nice, even edges. We're going to start to get some nice, even edges
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We're going to start to get some nice, even edges. We're going to start to get some nice, even edges
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We're going to compose the kind of order that we want on this piece of wood
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This should be pretty square up here. It looks pretty good from where I'm standing
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because you see the jointer started to do its work here and it happened to do its work right across the width in this case
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We go further along and we find that it's jointed less of the width
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That makes sense because don't forget this board was cupped so it should be removing more wood at the ends than it is in the middle
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That's exactly what we're finding. See, we've got full coverage here and not so full coverage there
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I'll continue. I think maybe another couple of passes should fix this
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We'll take a look for squareness and straightness of this edge. We'll take a look for squareness and straightness of this edge
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Well, clearly that looks a lot better. Let's see how it checks out
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That's pretty good. There's a little bit of dirt on here. Yeah, that looks quite good
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Square-wise, it's great. Let me take a look here. Oh, and look at how flat that is
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See, it's no longer dished like it was before. So there you go
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That's the most basic way to use a jointer. It's probably the way that you will start
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and it's the ideal approach for use with a small benchtop jointer
