Milling Lumber: 101

hey guys so today we're going to talk about milling [Music] one of the first things you need to know about milling is of course the jointer this is probably the first tool you're going to use when you're trying to get a piece of lumber flat when I talk about milling what I mean is simply how do you get this rough board flat and square so the first step is you're going to take to the jointer and we're going to deal with one face but before I get into that I'm going to talk about the jointer just a little bit this is an 8 inch jointer it works pretty well for most of my needs you have the infeed table and then you have the outfeed table obviously you've got your safety guard and then you go to your fence here that goes from 90 to 45 it can tilt and the way this works it's got a cutter head in this case it's a straight blade and it's full nice and half and it's going to rotate and as you run your piece of wood your piece of lumber across this it's going to fine it and as you can see I just placed this down here this thing's rocking around so it's not flat that's what this will do it's only to be used to be one face and one edge you're not going to try to get your piece of lumber milled down to your you know decide dimension by doing one face and flipping it and doing the other face that's not going to work okay so we're going to talk about the infeed in the outfeed table and this is pretty simple how to adjust this you loosen this gauge and then you're just going to move this rule up and down and it gives you a little gauge here it goes from anywhere from 0 to 1/2 inch 1/2 inch is insane I've never done that much I don't think you ever will need to usually I'm within about the 0 and 8 inch and that gets you know me what I need so the Alfie table so it gets more complicated it can be real frustrating if the Alfie tables not set correctly so I'm going to show you a real easy way to just check that and make sure everything's good to go before you start your milling project so I'm gonna grab a piece of wood and I'm just going to run this guy across one time and then I'm going to use it to check the output table whilst I do this I'm going to move back to safety guard just so you guys can see what's going on my hand is plenty safe since this is a very high piece but obviously when you're doing this you do not want to move this out of weight this guy should always be in place [Music] alright guys I'll just run that through and I can tell straight away like that just pushing down heads rocking back and forth that Alfie tables too low so it's kind of hard to tell but right at this and it's going to snap so dipped and what happens is it's coming across and in that very end it drops down because it's Alfie tables too low this the Alfie table should match the cut that you're taking off maybe a couple of thousands lower so to adjust that now I'm going to run this guy in about four inches take it back out turn everything off and then I'm going to check how to out the table the lights to that Cup [Music] hi guys so I just ran this in about four inches or so so I can see what's going on and you can see the cut that it's taken off right now is about 1/16 well this outfeed table needs to match that cut a few thousandths lower typically works well so now I can move this end I'm going to get it past that cut ahead there you go it's not in a fan with the cutter heads but you can see it's kind of hard to tell but that's 64 4 so gap underneath this and that's why I'm getting at snipe on the tail end so with this in place I'm going to adjust the outfit table all right so now I'm just going to raise this up until it's just underneath that cut alright so it looks pretty good so I'm going to lock that back down and do one more test [Music] all right so now you can see it's nice and flat up against the Alfie table so that's a good cut is when you're singing down it there's no snipe anywhere so we're good to go that will deliver a nice flat board all right guys so we've gone over the Alfie table being too low and that's typically the one that's most common and it's really easy to figure out what's going on that because you see the smite at the end one that I found students have the harder time with is when the Alfie tables too high obviously if this alpha table is a sixteenth or an eighth inch too high you're going to know straight away you bring this in it's just going bang up against it but if it's even a few thousands too high you won't know unless you're paying attention when you're running it and what happens is it touch it for so you know cent amount and then starts raising it up slowly without you even knowing but what you do tell is this you basically you make a bow it's like a rocker and it'll just keep doing that no matter how many times you run across it so I'm going to run it across and if you watch the front end of this as it comes through it should be flat but see what happens it's going to raise up slowly [Music] you [Music] so it's pretty clear you can see it's kind of that front and it raises it up and it doesn't cut really anything off the backhand and that's what happens well that's not going to help you know got to get everything nice and flat and true if you want to have a good project and have good joinery so now I can go ahead and adjust an ageist way to do this I know it's too high I'm just going to drop it load and it probably needs I'm going to run in take a 4-inch pass like I did before and then raise it up to that again so we'll go ahead and drop the table all right so I'm pretty sure that's too low now so I'm going to run it again [Music] she likes before I just did about four inches or so and now that gives me the way to bring it back up all right so now I'm just going to raise this up to the bottom of that cut I mean it should be pretty much spot-on a couple thousands will work that looks pretty good so I'm going to go ahead like that out and run it one more time [Music] [Music] not so that's it nice and flat I get to go now we've got the the joint is set up the outfeed table set up we're going to talk about how to mill a piece of wood so this is just some lumber it's you know it's rough milled right now rough sawn and so there's nothing flat about this or square about this piece the jointer is to get one face flat and the way I like to do this and the way I was taught is I'm going to get one stage flat and then I'm going to take that face over to the planer basically what the planer does the nice the heads up here and it's just going to cut whatever this is doing so if this is a bold board it's just going to copy it it's not going to make anything flat it will clean it up and make it look nice but it will be bold cops twisted so it's really important your first step is always to join up so I like to get this face perfectly flat now that's going to go on the bed of the planer the heads up hair on the planer and it's just going to copy this it's going to make this top edge parallel to this bottom edge alright so a couple things to point out when you put the border first yondu it's going to put it down here and I'm going to you know just check it out and see what's going on so I can see there's a little bit of twist back from corner to corner flip it around see what's going on here and this sides a little bit better so I'm going to go with that usually if you've got it cupped you want the cup I guess up if it's bowed you want the bow up and the idea is if you if your boards bowed you're going to be just going to crush and however many times you need to basically bring this front edge and its back edge down until you get a flat board another thing to point out you do not want to push down I see people all the time the weighing down on this thing and as they go through they let go it's just springing back you want the weight of the wood you know also we use a push stick to be safe and just light pressure gun across and you just want to get this flat that's the goal another thing to watch out for is grain direction obviously I picked this piece because it's very clear as far as the grain goes like I mentioned before it's really important that you start reading the grain of your would that way you're going to get a much better finished result in this case is pretty easy to tell this grain is running up and out of the top hair so if I'm going to join us it's perfect going down just like this this this is the space I'm going to join on the jointer you want that grain raising up out and that way you're not going to get tear out if I went ahead I'll turn this around a little harder see the grain but now that grains pointing down if I were to run this across to jointer it's going to tear out those fibers are going to get pulled and just get ripped out kind of like shaving backwards so on the jointer grain up and out on the planer it's the other Wade planer you want the grain going down because the knife on the planer on the top hey guys so now I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to show you how to join a piece of wood and get a square a 90-degree edge on that piece so the way I'm going to show you is how I used to do it and now that after my mentorship for seven years I'm going to show you the way that my mantle showed me how to do it and why it's a better way to no piece of wood so typically what you'll see is people will just take the board to run it across the jointer that's already been done in this case so I've got a flat face and then they're going to go ahead and set it up and run it at a 90 yes that gets you a true 90 to that face that first face that you did but the problem is is you don't have any options if this grains running down and like we spoke about before you don't want that grain running down you're stuck you have to put that joint face has to go up against your fence so you can't turn this piece around ideally I want it to go this way well I have I can't do that because this is not joint so what I like to do and what I was you know how I was taught to do it is I'm going to go ahead I'm going to join this flat and now I'm going to go to the planer and make this top edge Paolo to this bottom and then I go back to the jointer and I can pick whichever way I want to do this edge so I'm going to go ahead and distend the one way of doing it and that's just by quintus up now never assume that this is square so I'm just going to get my combination square here and yeah it's definitely not square so I'm going to go ahead and adjust that real quick see there's no fine adjustment on this guy just have to mess with it until you get it just right all right that looks good enough it is when you tie this down you never want to just crank this down and then just go you want to check it one more time because a lot of times cranking that moose things around alright that looks good alright so now I'm going to make this edge out of ninety to this face and you know you don't just want to throw this up they're not paying the attention and just go for it you want to inspect it I usually look down this face head and make sure that I'm up against that edge up against this fence that's what we're reference enough right now so light pressure inwards and then I'm just on the back of this I'm just going to go through very gently in this case I'm not going to try to use a paddle on the back since I'm so you know there's so much height above the table there's no way my fingers are in any danger so I'm going to go ahead and just do that real quick [Music] all right so that got me my true nightie and that works just fine and for yes I did it just like that until I realized there's a better way to do it and the way I like to do it I'm going to show you how to do it now is first step you're going to face join get this one face nice and flat and then we're going to go to the planer I'm going to make this top edge pile to this and then we come back and make our edge snidey and that gives us selection and makes it where I can pick and choose what edge and what face I want to use alright guys so now I'm coming over to the planer this is a 12-inch actually I think it's a 13-inch Dewalt three blades and it's a great little planar it works really well so again talking about grain direction I've got this face nice and flat that's going to go down on the bed in the planer the knife's on the top now it's doing this so this grain it's a little hard to see here but this plane is going down like that so you want that Glen going down to the bed and that way you're going to get a much nicer cut so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to plane this family so nice things feature on this cut this little gauge here I pretty really ever use this measurement on the side I'll come in and just get it with just starting take a measurement and then I know one rotation on this guy is 1/16 so I'll just figure out do the math and just trust the rotations and it works every time perfectly so the time dust collector on [Music] [Music] all right so now I've got both of my face is done these guys are perfectly parallel to each other now I can go back and put my nightie on it all right so now I've just come from the planer I've got two perfectly parallel flat spaces and this is the way that I like to do it and it's for this purpose now I have options it's just it's all about giving me more options as far as taking care of the edge so if I want to put this face up against I can if I want to rotate and do this face I can whatever I want to do I can do that why that's important in this case this grain hair is going down well if I could only use this face I'll be going the wrong way so now I can come up and be like that's not how I want it flip it around and I'm good to go so I'm going to go ahead and take care of that [Music] all right so now I have three edges I need to take care of its fourth edge now this you could do a few different ways it depends to on what you're trying to accomplish it if I want a perfectly nice milled piece of material I'm going to go back to the planer I'm going to run this guy through the planet just like this now you could go to the table saw and you could set it up 1/64 heavy rip this on the table saw and then come back to the jointer and go across one time and take care of that table saw edge that you just delivered I don't like doing that because chances are and I'm just kind of particular in this way if you take all ten pieces you come back and run them and stack them all together you have a pretty high chance that they're going to be all a little bit different this does not this is a design to take things to final thickness that's what a thickness planers for so for me I'm going to go ahead join that edge go to the planer and get exactly what I want and very accurately all right so now I'm back to the planer I'm going to take care of this this last edge so we're joined with plane parallel and now we've got this 90 degree perpendicular to this face and so I'm just going to pass this through to clean up this top edge and like I tell all my students I'm not trying to show you I'm not saying as a right or wrong way necessarily there's many different ways to achieve the same thing but in this case this is the way I was trained by a professional woodworker and it's a it's it's it's a well thought out way and it delivers a very good end result so this is how I do it hey guys I just wanted to take a second to say thank you for watching this video if you enjoyed it please don't hesitate to like share and subscribe if you haven't already please take a moment to check out my patreon page at patreon.com slash philip morris furniture we have some really cool patron only content in the pipeline that we are currently working on and a very excited hey John also is the best place to get your very own student movie sponsor swag if you don't know what patreon is please check out this video here once again thanks for watching Cheers all right guys this is a quick review how we deliver this piece of s4s lumber from a rough piece of lumber so we have all four phases flat true and square so we went to the jointer first and we basically went through and checked and made sure the jointer outfeed table was set just right you made sure the fence was set at 90 degrees and then we took have one face so we went ahead we took care of faith then we went across back to the thickness planer and we took care this top edge and now we've made this top face pile off to the bottom and then back to the jointer and we set it up at 90 degrees and took care of one edge and then back to the planet so a lot of back-and-forth it's a good workout but it delivers a very accurate result thanks guys for watching I hope you found this video useful if you did please hit that subscribe button and I'm looking forward to getting more videos out there to help people out on their journey and furniture making [Music]

Channel: Philip Morley Furniture

Views: 58,633

Rating: 4.9603133 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, furniture, custom, woodworker, phillip, morely, milling lumber, how to mill lumber, how to flatten a board, setting up a jointer, joiner, jointer, jointer parts, whats the difference between a jointer and a planer, milling process, milling machine, milling projects, beginners guide to milling, milling for beginners, mill wood at home, milling wood machine, milling wood from logs, jointer basics, milling basics, woodworking basics, introduction to woodworking

Id: ahr7oUWhiLU

Length: 21min 4sec (1264 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/MrMarez]

I'm sure r/woodworking would love this vid too! 😁