How to successfully 'Joint' boards to make wide panels without a Jointer

if you want to glue boards together they do really need to be touching and square and straight and for that you need a jointer but not very many DIYs in the UK own jointers they're expensive and they end up just Gathering dust so today I'm going to show you two ways of jointing boards using power tools you might already own [Music] it's quite common to need to join two or more boards together so you end up with something wider than any strip that you started with but it's quite difficult to do because that edge needs to be straight and square to the board and if you haven't got a jointer then I think there's three main ways of doing it the first way the traditional way is by hand with a plane but unless you're really skilled in traditional woodwork you could find yourself going round around in circles for many hours trying to get the board straight and square and end up with something a lot smaller than you started with with plenty of sawdust on the floor because it's not just getting the balls to line up with each other if I just show you on the bench here these boards line up quite nicely but when I press the balls together as if I'm gluing them this is what we end up with which isn't really what you're looking for so it's more complicated than just getting a straight board so I'm going to show you two ways of doing it using power tools you may already have let's start with the first way which is actually using the table saw and it's not quite as straightforward as just running your board through the fence to get a straight line because it also depends on how straight the opposite Edge is for instance if I get a ball like this which is not straight or Square in any sense and the problem is the side opposite to the one that you're trying to prepare and end up with a nice straight line on if this side isn't straight as you go down and you push it against the fence it can wander or if it's bowed it will end up cut in some sort of curve so you can't just push this through the table saw and expect to end up with a nice straight line because it really depends on how straight the opposite is Edges if this is slightly bowed then the chances are the opposite Edge is as one doesn't matter how many times you put it through you'll end up with another sort of curve so we've got to find a way of pushing this through absolutely straight against the fence that doesn't rely on the board and we can do that with the use of a really simple jig The Jig I'm making here is out of the end of a sheet of 18 millimeter or three quarter inch ply so it's four foot or 1.22 meters long and I've decided to trim it to around about 300 millimeters wide this I think will give me a wide enough jig to accommodate most of the boards I'll ever want to join in the future without being too cumbersome but it doesn't really matter how wide it is it really is up to you I'm purposely using the factory edge here along the fence which is the one The Jig should be used with in the future just so you know it's straight if I start making any Cuts I remove the shop sticker which is still in 2023 still stuck on with the wrong type of glue that makes it near impossible to remove cleanly so what I'm going to do is to cut a number of 10 millimeter deep dovetail type slots in the surface which will then accept tracksaw clamps so I can clamp down any boards in the future onto the top face of The Jig then running the factory Edge Of The Jig along the fence means whatever shape board is clamped to it will naturally be cut in a straight line I start by cutting two slots lengthways Into The Jig and I'm trying to do it in one pass without firstly using a straight cutter to remove material as a relief cut it sort of works but the router you can hear complaining continuously and it also means quite slow progress [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so as you can see I did end up resorting to making some relief cuts it was just going to take too long the other way the only problem with doing a relief cut first is you've then got to line up the board again or change the cutter and change it in battles and falls and balances forwards each time and on this on this particular router I've got to change the cutter I've also got to take this off which is awkward as well now you may well be thinking Stuart why have you got them at all different angles and the answer is it doesn't really matter the lines can be anywhere as long as you've got enough to cover any sort of boards you're going to use on the table saw in the future every one of these I've seen before have had nice perpendicular lines because people just copy other people from YouTube so I want to do something different so there you go right let me just finish this and then I'll show you how it works on the table saw [Music] foreign [Applause] with a random selection of slots in my jig I can now use my tracksaw clamps to hold my regular board onto the top of it in the best position and alignment for the cut while I make this cut as usual I'm concentrating on keeping the edge of the jig absolutely flat against the fence all the way through foreign if you do it to both boards then irrespective of how good the back Edge is doesn't make any difference and that looks pretty good and if you check it for square that's pretty good as well it's naturally a square as the Blade is to the table saw bed so definitely worth checking that first and making sure that that's spot on and this will naturally follow so that's the first way of doing it now the second way of doing it is to use a router and let me go back one week ago to my last project where I use a router for joint in and Stuart will tell you all about how foreign so I've set up my DIY router jig and I put in a straight cutter which is just about deep enough to be able to cut my balls which are just under a one inch so I'm assuming that that's a one inch or 25 mil cutter now to make this into a jointer or a planer which is essentially the same principle what I'm going to need to do is to put a plant on this side of the fence to bring it out one or two millimeters relative to this side of the fence then with that plant in place if I line that up with the cutter then as the piece comes through it'll take off maybe one millimeter but then immediately run over this side of the fence which is exactly the same principle that electric hand planers use and Joint in machines so I need to find a material that I can stick on the side of the fence there's maybe one or two millimeters thick and I've just looked around the whole of the workshop I'm thinking about a solid piece of plastic that I could put on here and I've really I've got nothing suitable the closest I've found is this sign that was on my stand at maker Central this year which is about a millimeter thick and it's sort of cardboardy plastic so I'm thinking if I cut this up and stick this on the front if it's not quite thick enough and cut another section and stick it in front of that so I'm afraid the sign has to go [Music] thank you [Music] as the timber is passed through the cutter head it's removing around about one millimeter absolutely Square to the board while I was doing this I found it best to make sure the work piece is absolutely flat against the outfeed side of the fence for best results [Music] on each board I jointed both sides a couple of times so I now have different options for the final layout depending on what works best and so then I spent a couple of minutes trying different permutations until I found the absolute best fit which I was really happy with and worked to treat so whether it's a table saw or router it's completely possible to use those to Joint thin Edge boards which I think is pretty handy and something I'm going to continue using in the future because at the moment I have no plans to buy a jointer I know if I did it's just going to end up in the corner getting Dusty and getting in the way as well I hope you've enjoyed this video remember subscribe hit the Bell notification patreon all of that sort of stuff and I will see you next time

Channel: Proper DIY

Views: 324,596

Keywords: jointer sled, how to joint without a jointer, how to joint wood without a jointer, edge joint, how to joint boards without a jointer, woodworking jigs, join boards together, join boards without jointer, join boards edge to edge, join boards for table top

Id: UxADBjik5-Q

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023