Thread: Jointing without a Jointer. Thicknesser only... How do you improvise?

Hi HF,

One thing you can do is to use a saw that will work with a guide rail. Festool and Makita at least, make them. You can square one side of the board beautifully against the rail to get a smooth dead flat surface, then put the timber through a table saw with the square side to the fence and thus cut a square board. You can, of course, use the guide rail on the other side of the board after marking a set width, I find this works brilliantly. I don't have a jointer. I'm not sure why your boards should be warping after resawing, except that either you are resawing very thin slices, or the timber is too moist.

Regards,

Rob

Jointing is the proccess of getting a surface straight, flat and if required, set at a particular angle (often square) relative to another reference surface. The jointer fence can normally be set to angles from 45deg to 135deg relative to the infeed table to achieve the required angle, and the work is jointed with a previously jointed face hard against the jointer fence to joint the second surface

Thicknessing is the process of getting a surface parallel to and a specific distance from a reference surface. If the reference surface is not straight and flat, then the thicknessed surface will not be either, it will have similar anamolies to those of the reference surface, i.e a twisted ref will give a twisted finished surface, bowed ref will give a bowed surface etc. The only exception I can think of is a cupped reference surface may produce a flat but not definitely straight finished surface.

There is one way that I am aware to get a straight flat reference surface with a thicknesser, but it will not normaly give a surface set at a specific angle to a reference face. This method uses a fabricated sled as work holder. The workpiece sits on the sled, and is shimmed at regular intervals each side along its length so it cannot rock on the sled. It is then fed through the thicknesser so that the thicknesser skims a small cut of the highest part of the work in the sled. With repeated cuts and gradual height adjustments, the work can be flattened and straightened. Once this is achieved the work can be removed from the sled and thicknessed normally to obtain the required finished thickness. To joint the edge of the work, you could then rip with a high quality blade in a tablesaw, or at a router table with a jointer fence.

When using the sled method, the sled needs to be rigid enough to remain flat itself, flat enough to run through the thicky without rocking, and the shimming to support the work needs to be adjustable to set the work with full support but able to be locked into position so it does not move during a pass. The method can be useful for people with seperate jointer and thicky as often a jointer has a smaller cutting width than the thicky, so a sled can be handy for jointing wider panels.

This is one YouTube video of the process, there will be others.

Wot malb said. (He also said it better than I would have)