Thread: Jointing without a jointer (yes, this old thing..)

No indication of the width you are trying to work with, but for jointing edges, a router in a table with an offset fence works well. If you can access a router, you could make a table and fence fairly easily. For the fence set the infeed side about 0.5 mm back from the outfeed side (but coplanar), normally achieved by making both sides the same then sticking a shim like laminate on the outfeed face, and set the outfeed surface flush with the router bit, and the bit set to extend above the height of the edge of the work. Run the work across the table edge to bit to joint the edge. Wider table and longer fence best as with a jointer. For edge jointing only with 8mm stock, I think you would get away with a small flatness error in the table, but the fences need to be straight and coplanar.

For the faces, a sled for the thicknesser would be the go unless you are dealing with narrow stock (under 50mm), in which case you might get away with a long router bit in the table, but table flatness becomes more critical.

Alternatively, there is still the hand plane, but you might not have a bench long and flat enough to handle the job.

With regards to hand planes, and bench length: I was working on a house with a chippie uncle years ago, and he showed me a pretty simple trick. Get a couple of two-by-fours, and make a housing with a square cut, and a cut slightly out of square. Rest the board in the housing, and drive a wedge in to fit. Tada, your board has feet.

With regards to powered hand planes: Do not waste your time. Speaking from personal experience, all you're going to do is chew up your wood. You will be lucky if your edge is square, let alone straight. Use a router or a hand plane.

A hand plane is the most obvious solution. You can clamp both boards back to back and joint in one go, that way any little discrepancy in angle is compensated for. Of course you still need to plane the edges straight, or with a slight concave (probably advisable over that length to make sure the ends don't open up).

If you have resawn most likely the faces aren't flat, so you'd need to fix that before using anything like a jointer or router table that will reference the face. But if they are flat and in plane on one side, something you can achieve using a sled in your thicknesser, then I have found the split fence on the router table as suggested above to be a good solution.

I just remembered another way using a router and a straight edge. You clamp the boards in the orientation you want them when glued up, with a slight gap between. Then you position the straight edge as a fence so that a straight cutter in your router will be centred on that gap, but you want the bit to cut both edges at the same time. Then you run the router along the fence and at the finish you have two boards with matching edges, even if your straight edge is not perfect..