How to properly square up lumber

[Music] welcome to Wilson's fine woodworking tutorials my name is Bill Wilson I'm a retired shop teacher of 22 years I have been retired from work for 17 years I've built my dream shop today we're going to show you how to square up some lumber but first you must understand all the safety rules for your machines understand how to operate them safety glasses and hearing protection whenever necessary you'll notice I have rough sawn lumber here I'm wearing very thin nitrile gloves because you can get a lot of slivers from handling this kind of lumber if you are using lumber from a lumber yard you will probably still have to square it up because it sits for a while lumber moves and it won't be square first thing we're going to do is go to the jointer all right we're at the jointer and you adjust the fence so they just have a little more than necessary maybe a quarter inch or so than the width of the lumber you want to join surface joint now on the end grain you will see the growth rings here like this the growth rings when the lumber dries trying to straighten out so that means that it becomes cupped opposite to that curve like this and it becomes a low point here and a low point here this being a high point so when it sets on the table it doesn't rock if you do it the other way it would rock and that is a little risky and dangerous so that's the way it has to go like so this side down what I can't see right now because it's rough it's very hard to see is the grain on the side so what I'm going to do this shows the grain on the top going like that and I'm going to go against the grain for a second just to show you myself you narrow it up and I want to be able to read the grain here here's the jointer here the jointer knives and they are rotating like this if we push the board through it is cutting into that like so now there is the side that has to go down and I've just joined it this edge to show you that the grain is actually going up on this edge so if I push this through like that the knife is cutting into grain and will tear it open what I have to do is turn it around so that this hand leads it goes through so it does not tear it open so that side is down I turn it in for an and the fence is now adjusted want you to notice where I am putting pressure I try to get get on the outfeed table as soon as possible and then stay there if you put pressure on the infeed table you'll end up with a board that has a curve in it this goes for edges as well as surfaces [Music] we're now at the thickness planer this is our jointed edge and you can see here is the grain direction on the edge of this piece unlike the jointer which has the knives below the table the knives on the thickest planer are above the table so they are going like this and we must have that line going downhill so that the grain is not open by the knives now as this goes through we set it of course so it's just barely going to take a little bit off like a thirty second make sure when you make different passes that you don't put it through in the same place every time you want to use the whole knife range so that it dulls evenly as it were [Music] [Music] the ward 1/32 off each time [Music] [Music] [Music] all right when the board goes through the thickness planer something happens that we call snipe what it is is a little bump about two to three inches at the beginning and about the same at the end this is because of the knife set which is in the middle with rollers on the out feet and rollers on the in feet and there's a space between them and the board moves a little bit and that's what it's caused by that space if you're doing multiple boards what to do is to have one go right after the other to fool the machine into thinking the board is not ending and you'll reduce the snake like so [Music] [Music] you can see I can see now there at the beginning there's snipe right there at the beginning that's the first board and at the back of it there isn't any all right and there isn't any at the beginning of this board but there is a little bit back here so I reduced the Stipe where the two boards were contacting all right I have a few more passes to make it a slight little waviness here I want to take a little bit more off I'm not at my required thickness yet this is a thicker board and that's fine I can keep going doing that if you have a thinner board about half this thickness and if I kept planing one side only what would eventually happen is the board would be bowed like this from end to end as it comes out the machine the only way to tell of course is to sight down the edge like this I think our board is not all that necessary so let's pretend this is a thinner board when I come through and it starts to bow because the grain direction is going downhill if I flip it over like this the grain is still going downhill I can run it through on the other side the reason this happens is this imagine you take a pair of scissors and rub it on a piece of ribbon it curls the ribbon that's exactly what's happening to a thin board it rubs this and causes the bowing [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the traditional way of joining is to do one surface and then one edge the reason I do not do it in that order is because sometimes your grain orientation doesn't allow you to do that smoothly on the edge if you had a diagonal grain and I did this side first and I flipped it I still have the diagonal grain and I'd have to join against the grain if I do the other surface first of all I can turn the board and forend and then do the edge so that is the reason I do thickness planing after one surface then I can take care of the edge all right we have our fence set for our width of cut plus 1/16 the sixteenth will be taken off on the jointer to make a smooth edge when we're done you'll notice we're not using the overhead dust pickup so that you can see what's going on a little bit better I've have here my push sticks and I will not be standing behind the lumber you never want to stand between the blade and the fence when I'm ripping a piece of lumber due to kickback the blade height is set so that the gullet is that's the space between the teeth is just about even with the top of the piece of lumber back up my board is 1/16 wider than necessary as was ripped on the table saw now we come back to the jointer I'm gonna edge joint and take that sixteenth off to make the edge smooth notice the position of my hands the final step for squaring up lumber is to cut the length first of all we need a square in I have two boards now I want to cut them to the same length so measure desired length there's two feet position here I happen to have a laser but you could do it with the blade coming down contact it's gonna be exactly the same have some device like this so it measures them exactly the thing you could stack them I don't like to do that one and the other they are exactly the same way in review remember when squaring up lumber that when you feed material into the jointer the grain is going uphill over the knives and if it's into the thickness planer it is downhill into the knives also to square up lumber you must use a jointer it has to flatten one side first of all before the other side is made parallel on flat in the thickness planer if you only have a thickness planer when you put the board through it will make it smooth but it will replicate whatever twists or bows are in the lumber no matter how thin it gets it'll always be the same so you must use a jointer first to square up lumber I hope you enjoyed watching Wilsons fine woodworking tutorials hope to see you in the future

Channel: Wilsons Fine Woodworking

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Keywords: Fine Woodworking, Woodworking, How to use a thickness planer, How to use a jointer, How to use a table saw, How to use a sliding compound saw, How to square up lumber, How to square up wood, Wood, How to do woodworking, Shop teacher, Design technology, Professional woodworker, Professional woodworking, How to setup a shop, How to setup a dust removal system, Wilsons Fine Woodworking, Jointer, Thickness planer, Table Saw

Id: uSuG1XRBZBw

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2017