- How you doing? I'm Matt.
Today I'm gonna show you five different ways to joint
boards without a jointer. Five methods include a piece of plywood, building your own jig,
using a simple 4-foot level, just using tape, and then
also using a circular saw. Let's get started. For a lot of wood workers,
this is a big challenge to be able to find a way to joint lumber without buying a jointer
because jointers are expensive. So if you've watched this
channel any time at all, you know that before I was
blessed with that Wahuda jointer that I was jointing with my
table saw just using a level. This is probably the easiest way to get started jointing boards. It's not the best way
but it will get you by. So it will not make a perfectly
tight seam every time, especially when you get into longer boards over about four feet. However, on shorter
boards it works very well. Let me show you how to do it. First and foremost, for
this method to work, your blade has to be
90 degrees to your saw. So if it's not then it's not gonna, your seam isn't gonna come out right. Gotta be 90 degrees. If it's not 90 degrees,
you're wasting your time. Now I'll drop a link in
the description below for one of those little
digital angle finders if you're interested. So I'm gonna be jointing
the edge of this board using a four foot level. And all this is, is you
just take a four foot, I like this I-beam aluminum style because it's not gonna bend and
twist on you like a plastic. The reason this works, I get a lot of questions on why this works versus just using the fence, so the real reason this actually works is using a level on the table saw, I'm actually magic. I've actually sprinkled
some magic dust on this, some magic sawdust on this level, and it now works because it's magic. (chuckles) The reason this method works is because you're giving this edge a flat surface reference
on the other side. So whatever is going on over here on the right side of the, of the blade, when this goes through the blade, then that's what's gonna
happen over here on the left. If I just used the fence,
and I'm gonna exaggerate, but if this board has a
big bow in it like this, when I'm pushing it through, it'll actually do that on the blade. You wouldn't think it would,
but it does in a small way. But that's just gonna leave a non-flat, non-square cut on this side. When you use something
like a four foot level, and it must, it must go
through at the same time or move with the board. If it does not move with the board, you might as well just use the fence. If you're just doing
this and pushing it by, it's no different than the fence. All you've done is extend your fence. Let's try it. (saw buzzes) I'm gonna do two boards then I'll line them up beside
each other and show you. (saw buzzes) So now you can see it
is not exactly perfect, but it's really, really close. I could probably run it
through one more time and get it much better. (saw buzzes) All right, I run it through again and you can see, man, this
thing is really, really close. I mean, you can tell the difference in the grain patterns there, but, and that's just jointing
with a level right there, so not bad. The second method on
jointing with a table saw, is you're just gonna build
a simple jig for your saw using 3/4 inch plywood. Let me show you. So I'm gonna rip this down to six inches. (saw buzzes) What I did was just marked where the riving knife and the blade is, and then I'm gonna clamp this here, move it over out of the
way, I'm just gonna take the riving knife off. So I'm just gonna turn the blade on or turn the saw on and raise the blade up, and it's gonna make that cut. Then I will turn the saw off, un-clamp it and move this back. This-a-way, until it gets
to the riving knife mark. I was actually originally gonna raise the blade up, leave
it spinning and then, pull the plywood back, but the threat of kick-back there is way too much for me to actually want to do that. So what I did was just turn the blade on, raise it up, turn the saw off, lower the blade, move the
jig, clamp it back down, then raise that blade back up like that. Once most of the material
was cut out of there, then you saw me slide
it kinda back and forth. And get any irregularities out of there. That's a big word, irregularities. (saw buzzes) Right, took my just a minute
to figure that one out, but it looks really good,
and I could actually the more I do it, the
tighter that seam is getting. You can see it's pretty tight as is when I push it together
and then I can actually you know, release it there. So one way to make this even
better as a jointing jig is if you could take
and put a piece of vinyl and stick it here. Something this slick, it won't actually hand the
board as it goes through, but it makes this backside stick out just a little bit,
about the same thickness as what you're actually
taking off the lumber. That'll give this a flat surface to reference to after it's been cut on this side and it'll just make jointing a little easier using this method. However, it does work even without that, but adding a piece of vinyl or something here on the backside will help you out. So that method actually works fairly well just for a quick jointing
jig for your table saw it's just a piece of plywood,
run it up through there. It took me several passes to figure out what, how to do it properly. Extremely light pressure and take very, very little off of
the material at a time. 64th, if that, just,
just barely skimming it. Once you do that, you wind up with the good tight seam as equal
to, or about as equal to, as the level jig. Now I've got another one I wanna try and see if we can get it even better. Let's do it. If this video's bringing you value, click that share button,
share it with your friends or family member who is also into woodworking and
hopefully it can bring them value as well. (saw buzzes) This is just an eight
inch strip of plywood, three quarter inch. Now I'm going to make a jig. So I'm actually gonna make a jointing jig or you could actually
use it as a tapering jig as well for tapering
legs, that sort of thing. What I want to use to do that is a router, this quarter inch relief bit, and a quarter inch or
half inch dovetail bit from Micro Jig as well as some Dovetail clamps that's
gonna go on this jig. It's gonna make jointing on a table saw that much easier for you if
you don't have this stuff, there'll be a link in the
description below of this stuff. It's not that expensive
to get started with this, and they have several other
options you can pick up if you want to get into that system. All right, so this is what I've done, I got my sheet of plywood cut out and I've marked four inches
from the end on each end, I wanna draw a line 'cause that's where my dovetail groove will go. (scoring wood) And you just make this board however long your fence is and then you're gonna mark half way of that distance,
whatever that is for you, make a line and then halfway between these two lines we're
gonna make another line so that we can have another groove here. And then we've got two marks, two inches from each end there, we'll make a mark down through there and then that'll be our
grooves that we're gonna cut. I don't have a router table,
so that's gonna make things just a little bit more time consuming, but it's not, I don't think it's gonna be impossible to do. You
set this quarter inch relief bit and we have to cut the quarter inch grooves first,
that way the dovetail bit doesn't actually have to
take out as much material. It'll make last longer,
it'll make it a cleaner cut, et cetera, et cetera.
So what I gotta do is set up a line, route that, change bits, route that, and over and over
until I get 'em all done. So that's gonna take a little bit of time. So all I did was lined up,
I put my router down there, lined up the center of
the bit with the line, and then I just measured
from there to the line and squared everything up. (saw buzzing) Gonna be a whole lot of blade changing. Man I need a router table. (saw buzzing) I don't know why I was
going the wrong way, but I was, don't do that. So that's the dovetail track and, I bought these clamps that
fit the dovetail track Just like that. That's awesome. This is gonna be an
awesome sled. Here we go. I gotta finish up these grooves and then I'll show you
what this thing can do. (saw buzzing) Lesson number one, don't pull the bit up or it'll make a hole. I think
it'll be all right though, but don't pick the router
up with the dovetail bit. Bad idea. So I've got all those
grooves cut in there, those dovetails cut in there with that palm router. Router table would have been so much easier, but it wasn't too bad, I just had to switch the bits out and make sure they were the
correct depth every time and then set up that straight edge. It's pretty dang straight,
if I do say so myself. I'm gonna put a 45 degree
chamfer on three sides only. I'll show you why. (saw buzzing) So I'm just gonna measure over one inch from the edge and make a mark, same thing here, make a mark, and then I'm just gonna line up my blade and take off a one inch corner at a 45 degree angle. I'm gonna
do that on the four corners. I should've done this
before I put the chamfer on, but, live and learn. Boom! There it is! I
like it. I like it a lot. I have high hopes for
this working better than the other two methods.
That was so simple to do. It just took a little bit of
time swapping those bits out. If you've got a router table,
you'll be done with that in no time. Put a little
paste wax on there, I prefer Trewax because it doesn't stink. Johnson's Paste Wax actually
has a real bad smell that Trewax doesn't, helps it glide, butter smooth on that table. I like it. So, the way this works, I've got my board that I want jointed, I've
got my dovetail clamps, and we're just gonna slide
one in from the side. I've run this fence - (tool falls to floor) I've run the fence to
where this sled is actually just beside the blade. Now you can actually attach a miter groove or a miter, what'd they call that,
you can actually attach a miter slide, a piece of
board down through there, three quarter inch piece of board, and make it run in the groove if you want. But for a jointing sled you don't need it. Right. Because you're
gonna be holding pressure against the fence. And so all you wanna do is have that board overhang
the mit, the sled itself. (clamp closes on wood) And so it's overhanging
about an eighth inch, maybe. Just a little bit wider than the blade. It doesn't really matter as far as, what the alignment is so long as the blade cuts the entire board or
cuts a strip off the board. Because it's just up in
the air and it's gonna cut that edge off flush
and then you're gonna flip it over, put it against the fence and run it through without the sled and that's gonna give
you two parallel sides which is what you're after. (saw buzzing) That makes me happy. That
looks good, I like that. (saw buzzes) Boom! That's the best joint yet. Jointing sled, man I
shoulda built one of those a long time ago. The level works okay, but the jointing sleds
wins this challenge by far. It's easy, it's quick, I
think if I put a miter sled under there, a board that
actually runs in the miter sled, or Micro Jig actually makes a 360 sled kit that'll actually attach
to the bottom of this and you can use it that way. Now this can actually
be a tapering jig also, so it's a multi-function
jig, just as a bonus for you. If you want to use this as a tapering jig all you need to do, if
you've got a board that you wanna taper from
say, four and a quarter, to three and three quarters,
all you do is line it up, your mark here, that's
gonna be the cut line of your blade at four
inches and then back here you're gonna make that mark
at three and three quarter and clamp everything down. Really quick, the reason
you keep this side square versus chamfering all four sides is you wanna leave one
square side to reference for tapering. So if you're gonna have a board down here that's one inch and then up here it's four inches, you're gonna need something
to reference that by. So this square edge
will help you with that. If you're gonna be using
this as a tapering jig, I would highly recommend either putting a zero play miter bar underneath so that it runs in this track, or,
just cutting a strip that fits in there like you
would a table slaw sled. Let's try it and see what happens. (saw buzzing) Look at that. So simple, so simple. So if you're tapering legs,
whatever you need to taper, tapering jig slash jointing jig slash, now you've got a high
fence if you need that for whatever reason you got a board that's taller and you're cutting a dado in it, or cutting a rabbet in or whatever, you need a high fence,
this just turned into a high fence. So, this
is a multi-purpose jig and you get that as a bonus
for watching this video. I'm very happy with this
sled, I, man it just works so well, it's actually kind of an ingenious design, that
Micro Jig come up with. I bought all this stuff.
What really tipped me off to this stuff was, I have,
one of you viewers actually sent me the 360 Sled Kit,
so just this piece here. When I got this, I started
looking into it and saw that they had all of this other stuff which was the dovetail
bits, the relief bit, and then these clamps and
then I saw some videos, they've actually got a
video on how to make this exact sled. I'll drop a link
to that in the description below and you can go check that out. Has free plans, everything
and so you could actually make one of these for
yourself using their guide. But this works really
well, it works flawlessly. To actually edge joint a
board and for tapering, things like that it's gonna
be a big game changer for you. If you've got a table saw. So I actually didn't
come up with this idea, I saw it on a video by
3x3Custom-Tamar over there. If you wanna see how she does it, you can go check it out because she's working without a jointer as well. Double-sided tape, I don't have any so, I'm going to, for the
video, improvise with good old-fashioned duct tape. I would actually not
recommend using duct tape for this because when you
double it over like that it's gonna be really thick.
That's why you should use double-sided tape, it'll
all be really thin. But, just for demonstration purposes, you're just gonna take
the tape on your sled or a piece of plywood
is all this is gonna be. You're gonna take your
board that you want jointed, and just barely hang it over
the edge of your plywood so that the blade's
actually gonna make the cut. And same thing down here. (wood slaps) Set on top of that tape.
That's just keep everything from slipping and moving, similar to what the clamps do on the sled. Once it's stuck, you should be able to just to run it through no problem. (saw buzzes) That easy. That is easy.
Then all you'd have to do is just peel it up, take
the double-sided tape off of your board. You've got a jointed edge. Now that I've built the
sled, it got me thinking. I know that's dangerous. Can I joint with the sled without a table saw? Just using a circular saw? Let's find out. So I'm just gonna clamp this
tubasix, tubasix on here. Flip this over. This is gonna work y'all. Who believes? Gotta believe in me. I believe, I believe! That's gonna work. ♪It's gonna work, I believe I can fly. ♪ It's gotta work, right? I
been trying to think about how to do this for years. Kabam. Check this out. Who
thinks this is gonna work? (saw buzzes) Boom! Aha! That works.
I'm a genius. I know. You can tell me, I don't mind. That works, that works
well and it's gonna be a good flat edge on this side, and now obviously you would
need a table saw or something or even a, maybe the kreg
ripcut could flip it over and use this side as a flat reference too. Yeah, I think that would work actually. And then you would have two parallel edges and, with a circular saw. Now it would be hard
to do with a tubafour, or anything smaller than a tubasix. You could probably still do it, but it would just, it
would be much harder to do. (laughing) It's flat. That's about
as close you gonna get a rough cut board flat
with a circular saw. And in case you don't know a kreg rip cut is just a circular saw
guide. Any circular saw fits in there, and you can actually put it to, say, you know, couple inches. It'll go down to well like, one inch. And the circular saw will
actually ride in here like this. And then you could actually reference this edge to cut this
edge, and you would have two parallel sides. Jointing
with a circular saw. Those are the methods you can use if you don't have jointer.
If you do have a jointer I want to throw this in the challenge, just to see how it stacks up against, especially that sled because that sled was (light bulb dings) (saw buzzing) For speed and convenience, obviously, the jointers gonna win. It, once you clamp these together, the gap goes nonexistent. As you can see there, mash 'em together and then, course I can slide them apart. That's really cool, I
really liked this sled makes perfect, flat edges. Perfect. They come together
perfectly. Long as your blade is 90 degrees to your table, and as long as your board's not wompyjawed sleds the way to go. Now the taping method, alto, alto? The taping method also works really well, you're just gonna have to
stick and unstick every time. But that's an option for
you if you don't wanna do T tracks or the Micro
Jig match fit system. Match fit? Yeah. But now that I have this
sled I can use it for multiple uses, tapering, high fence, and then also jointing jig if need be. Multi-use sled, so it's really, I think, the winner because you
can actually do more than just joint with it. Hey, if you liked this
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