Wood Jointer Tips for Setting Up and Using a Jointer

hello everyone I'm calling Canet I can always tell what I haven't talked about a topic for a while because they started getting questions on it and today I'm going to give you some tips on how to set up your jointer the first thing you need in setting up your jointer is good quality measuring tools I purchased this assuming that it was straight many months after I got at home and and got down to checking it I discovered that it's not straight it's actually arch so I can't use it for much if you follow my channel you'll know that I'm not a huge fan of these tri squares because the inexpensive ones are not necessarily square so I would never trust this for setting up a jointer what you need for setting up a jointer is a good quality steel engineer's square a fixed one like this one and one thing you need to keep in mind is that wood can move it can move from built-in tensions it can move from absorbing or releasing moisture so jointing is not always the most perfect process now the other thing you want to check on your jointer is to make sure that all of the components are straight and flat and I've never actually seen a jointer where for example a tense fence or the in feet or outfeed tables are twisted or bent or arced I just haven't seen it I'm sure there are cases of it out there but if that's something that you want to check then one of the ways to do that is with this straight edge with a cord and I'm gonna take you over to my jointer and show you how you can do that quickly here we are my jointer and this is the fence and what I'm using here is just some dental floss so it's easy to use and anyway I don't like cool mint so it ended up in the workshop so what I want to show you here is if you don't have a straight edge or you can't trust it here's a way of using a thread or a very fine piece of cord and dental floss works great for this and what you do you need to make sure see how it's wrapped around that side and then take it on this side down over here and pull it snug and when you look down on that cord there should be no place where that where you can actually see between the fans and that cord so if it's out by any amount you'll notice that there's a gap in there it's very easy so the way you check the middle but then you also check corner to corner and corner to corner and you need to wrap it around so that it's nice and tight and I can see that my this cord that I'm using here is straight it's barely touching the fence all the way along you can do the same thing with your your in feet in your out foot table if you're following along in my channel you'll know that I make these push blocks for myself I make them for my router table or use them also on the jointer these work really well these are very important for getting good results on your jointer let me show you why so here we are at my little jointer at training tool and of course there's the infeed and the outfeed and the wood gets pushed this way and the jointer knives are spinning into the wood now it's critical that the jointer knives are slightly above the height of the outfeed table and there's a link in the article that will that will take you to how to set that and where to set that and I'm not going to talk about that now if the jointer knives are below the outfeed table what will happen is you will you will be able to joint wood but as you're pushing it through the infeed table it will continue to go like this so you'll end up with a bold piece of wood and that's a common fault when the knives are below the outfeed table now pushing wood through a jointer is quite critical and of course the fence needs to be at 90 degrees and that's why we need to have a excellent quality square for setting that up now you may come into situations where the infeed and the out feet are a little bit different so it's might be square here but not quite square here what you need to do and I'm showing you why right now this it's critical that the outfeed be the one that's 92 degrees if the infeed is off by you know a thousands a couple thousands of an inch it doesn't matter this is the one that's critical and here's why when you're pushing wood through the jointer you start on the infeed table and then you move to the outfeed table and here's the reason why these paddles are so important because when you get to a jaw and it depends on the wood that you're using and of course there's exaggeration here in this mock-up but once you get to a point in the outfeed table you don't want to be pushing wood down here you want to have usually by time you've got of eight inches or a foot you can grab that with your paddle and pull through here so the in the infeed table now is inconsequential we don't really care where it is because what we want to do the blades and the outfeed table that's where we want to concentrate our pressure so as we're pushing through we're going to be pushing the wood through like this we don't want to stand in the middle of the jointer and I'm just going to use my hands for this we don't want to be standing in the joint middle of the jointer pushing here and pushing here as soon as it's safe and you have enough wood to do it you want to be pushing all of your effort on the outfeed table and that's why it's critical that the fence be at 90 degrees and that the jointer knives be set in accordance to the outfeed table the infeed table on a jointer is just along for the ride it's just to get you started and once you get started you're outfeed table and your fence are the two critical items now when we're jointing wood it really depends what you're doing with the wood but as a rule if we're and this is a rough piece of wood as a rule we would join the flat side first of all so the big wide piece that's what we want to join or cut first of all trim first of all then we do the the and I'm laying this against the the fence and I'm starting down here and then as soon as I get a place where I can I can hold that with the paddles I do the same thing but now the fence is the fence and the outfeed table are what's making the difference and all all the way along and that's what's going to give you that nice straight flat edge face a night straight flat edge and then 90 degrees and that's how we get good quality cuts on the jointer I had to work pretty hard to make this wood boat so I could do this demonstration but if I push that down you can see how that wood is bowed now here's something that happens even with boards that have a slight bow to them and that's why pushing the wood through like I've just told you why this is so important so what I see from time to time our people who have pieces of wood that are boned and they're pushing too hard on the wood and they want because they want to keep it straight and flat going through the jointer so what happens is they push it down like this and as they're pushing it through and holding it down pushing it hard pushing it hard what happens is the jointer knives come along and they cut the very bottom I don't know if I can show you but they cut along all the bottom all the way along all the way long right to the very end and right to the very end so what do you get you get a piece of wood that's now a sixteenth of an inch thinner but it's cut it from end to end so it still has the bow in it and that's why putting it on the outfeed is so important putting pressure on the outfeed because what you want to do when you cut the wood to get rid of this bow what you want to do is you want to take off for example on this side you want to take off that on this side and this down here you just want to take a little bit off on each end so you start here and it will cut cut cut cut then it will miss the blades all the way along until you get to here then it'll start hitting the blades again and it'll take that off then when you make your second pass it will cut a little above that but guess what it cuts a little bit further and it still misses the blades misses the blades but then when it gets down here it's going to start cutting back down here again sewing on your second pass it's getting almost flat and on your third pass depending how thick the how deep the bow is that's where you can get it flat but the way to do that is once you start here then you concentrate your pressure here and look at now you're not pushing down you're not making this wood flat it's the outfeed or the infeed table is just again it's along for the ride and you're just pushing the wood here and it will joint that jointer knife will cut where it needs to as it needs to so when you've got arced wood and when you're cutting wood on the jointer the arc wants to be like this you never want to try and joint wood this way you can't do it so you always want the cup on the bottom and that will give you and that process will give you nice straight boards that concludes my video for today just a few tips on using your jointer and setting up your jointer and don't forget in the description box there's a link to my other video where I talked about details of setting up the jointer knives that's important and it's also in the article so check both of those out oh and if you haven't subscribed yet I invite you to do that as well because there's lots more this coming I'm calling cadet 4 woodwork web thanks for watching you

Channel: WoodWorkWeb

Views: 54,241

Rating: 4.9419298 out of 5

Keywords: wood jointer, jointer, using a jointer, how to use a jointer, different ways to use a jointer, what is a jointer, jointer planer, bench top jointer, jointer tips, best jointer, planer jointer, diy jointer, tips and tricks, jointer jig, woodworking

Id: YbvPVz9NDxk

Length: 11min 30sec (690 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019