banana machine (edge jointing)

[tombo]

Spent a frustrating couple of hours yesterday trying to joint some boards for a glue up.
My normal setup for this is on my home made router table, I install a 1/2 inch straight cutter, and close in around the cutter by clamping 18 mm mdf to the fence. The outfeed side is shimmed out with about 5 sheets of A4.
As you can imagine its quite a lengthy setup, but so far i have had good results. The only thing different yesterday was that the boards were over a meter long.
In the end i gave up and ripped the boards straight on the TS and glued up. Still in the clamps now not sure i want to look at the results .
Thing is i know i need a better solution but cant spend too much cash. I was thinking of a SIP bench jointer, but after yesterday i am worried that the problem was that the down to the length of the boards related to my fence.
Would the bench jointer would have done the same thing or was it something else. Anyone got an idea what i did wrong?

Tom (homer)

 

[Steve Maskery]

HI Tom
Well I bet you have analysed the problem quite well.

I have a home-made fence on my router table. It's terriffic for lots of things, but I know it's not up to jointing 1m boards. You need solid metal (I'm not going to get into cast iron V aluminium again).

I have a jointer, and I use it for facing boards BUT for edging I usually take it to the saw table. I have a very nice Freud thin kerf blade and even on my cheap Taiwanese old tablesaw (we most definitely are not talking Unisaw here) I get a pretty good edge, which I then shoot with a couple of strokes of my No8 plane.

So, if you can't get a good jointer right now, my advice wold be to get a good rip blade, and fettle up the longest bench plane you can get your hands on.

Is this what you wnated to hear?

Cheers
Steve

 

[Midnight]

Tom... my sympathies... I've been there myself, but that's after using the bench jointer.

I gotta agree with Steve; best solution's a hand plane; #7 or #8 used with a good long straight edge, and a wee bit of elbow grease...

orrrrrr... build a shooting board for jointing edges..

 

[tombo]

you guys aren't cheering me up much... i Take it then that the bench jointer is a bad idea? Should i really wait till i can afford this

http://www.axminster.co.uk/product.asp? ... 4&recno=18

or have the space for

http://www.axminster.co.uk/product.asp? ... 27&recno=1

tom

 

[Philly]

Tom
The L-N is lovely but realistically the Jet is a great choice. I have the Jet 54a (with the longer beds) and it sure does make life a lot easier (and timber a lot straighter) Sure, I then swipe with a hand plane too, but if you are new'ish to hand tools planing a straight edge is a steep learning curve. DAMHIK.
So, save your pennys is my recommendation,
Cheers
Philly

 

[Chris Knight]

Tom,

I have a pretty good P/T but I never use the edges straight from it and always use a long plane to clean them up. IIWY, I would Ebay for a used Stanley or Record #7 or#8 or better still get a reconditioned one from Ray Iles. Such a plane will be useful for edge jointing and face planing.

 

[Alf]

I have a pretty good P/T but I never use the edges straight from it and always use a long plane to clean them up. IIWY, I would Ebay for a used Stanley or Record #7 or#8 or better still get a reconditioned one from Ray Iles. Such a plane will be useful for edge jointing and face planing.

Wot Chris said, except for the pretty good P/T comment... Yep, jointing edges by hand has a bit of a learning curve to it, but it's one of those skills that's worth the angst of learning how to do it. If you fancy getting good results, quick, try using a fence. But it really is worth learning the knack.

Cheers, Alf

 

[Midnight]

Tom..

re your Axminster choices... the Jet's gonna give you speed at the cost of a less than perfect finish (in common with all wood munchers) and restricted board length / width.... add that to their dust collection baggage and their attraction starts to fade quickly... IMHO at any rate...

I know from over a year's experience with the L-N #7 that you won't be disapointed.. working stock by hand gives a finish that no machine can look at while capacity is limited only by as far as you can reach; the price for this is time and a bit of sweat...

Like any other skill, working faces and edges by hand takes a bit of practice, but it aint rocket science; if I can learn I reckon just about anyone can.. there's ways and means to make things easier..

 

[johnelliott]

Here's another way to joint boards for a tabletop etc

http://www.woodshopdemos.com/fes-53.htm

John

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Anyone got an idea what i did wrong?

Hi Tombo

Yes, I'm going to be a know-it-all and say I know what went wrong. I am assuming that the boards you jointed did not end up flat.

First up, your router set-up is not the problem. 5 sheets of paper is probably about 1.5mm, and this is OK.

The problem lies in the way you feed the timber into your set up. Longer boards will accentuate the errors that are produced (as you will shortly understand) but I am sure that the errors are present on your previous efforts with short lengths as well - just not as easily detected.

On bowed timber (where it curves at the centre), a curve will pivot around a point rather than track in a straight line. The same thing occurs when you push you length of timber onto the router bit - it wants to follow the curve at that point, rather than track a straight line. So all you do is replicate the curve that was there in the first place. And no matter how many times you try and joint this edge, the same profile is repeated.

The answer is to first remove the high points in the curve. This process is no different whether you were using a power jointer or jointer plane. You can only flatten an edge once you have removed high points.

Try placing a straight edge over the board edge to help determine the areas you need to work on first. Mark these with pencil.

If you attempted to joint from the other side, where it curves at the ends, you would likely run into the problem of snipe. That is, clipping off the end of a board as the timber runs out of support along its length.

While I have a router table setup like yours, I prefer to joint with hand planes (Stanley #7 and HNT Gordon Try Plane). The basic principle is the same - remove high points first before you run the plane over the whole length. But an advantage of using handplanes is that you can joint two adjacent edges at the same time, so that any errors cancel out each other. I have not attempted this on a router table, but there is no reason why it can't be done.

Let us know how you get on.

Regards from Perth

Derek