A friend and I are having a debate over jointers.
One of us feels that lumber should be thickness planed and then run the material through the jointer to square the edges only,while the other believes that the face and edge of the boards should be run through the jointer after thickness planing.
It seems redundant to joint the face of the board after you have already obtained a true plane on the face of the board from the thickness planer.
Replies
The most efficient way is to face and edge then plane and rip. There are deviations and exceptions. It's common to face and plane oversize and sticker your wood for a week or two to acclimate. Usually a board or two will cup or twist so it will need additional facing and planing to dimension. I can't imagine planing then facing. Waste of time and material. If it's his shop he can do it anyway he wants. If he worked here he'd need to be retrained.
I agree with Rick. No further comment needed.
Best,
John
Ditto RickL. Unless the lumber is perfectly flat to begin with and being carefull to remove the same amount of material from both faces. And then I leave it a bit heavy and let it normalize and finish later, Though sometimes I do get a bit hasty and plow into the project too quickly.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
The terminology used in this thread has me totally confused. A jointer can both joint (square & straighten an edge for gluing) and it can plane (flatten the broad side of a board). The first one I owned was called a jointer/planer. A planer (also known as a thicknesser or thickness planer) can flatten the opposite side of a board from the one already made flat by some other means. Aren't these what you are writing about?
Assuming that they are, the first step in preparation of a board should be to plane one side on the jointer/planer. The next step could be to square one or both edges on the same machine, bearing in mind that these two edges probably will not be parallel, or the board could be run through the thickness planer to produce parallel faces on the board. There is little reason to fire anyone for either choice. Getting the edges of the board parallel is usually done by ripping on a saw then planing on a jointer/planer. If the board is thick, it can be run through the thicknesser on edge.
Production efficiency may dictate which choice is best in a particular shop. I cannot imagine running a board through a thickness planer as the first step in its processing as that will ensure that the board will never be flat.
What do you say?
Cadiddlehopper
Cadiddlehopper...I've always hated when they called it a jointer/planer. It's misleading unless it's a combination machine. Facing is the term used for the initial flattening of a board on a jointer. Edging is squaring the edge on a jointer. Using the right terminology is crucial in a commercial shop or things just don't go right. I think it's just as appropriate in a hobby setting.
RickL, --- We must come from different planets or nearly so. I have never before heard nor read the terms "facing" nor "edging" used to indicate planing & jointing even though I have been around a while longer than you. Obviously a cultural thing. That must be the case with your hatred for the term jointer/planer also. I regret the shortening of its name myself. That has been its name for longer than we have been around.Just being from different generations may make some difference in our understandings of various terminologies also. We must be aware that we have little say about what is the correct terminology. We must communicate, however, which requires that we be aware of what others understand. We are not the Language Dictators. I doubt that your choice of terms is will achieve universality.Having some idea of your meanings, I will read your post again.Cadiddlehopper
RickL: Now that I understand your terminology, I can agree wholeheartedly with your advice.Having majored in English with a continued interest in our feeble efforts to communicate clearly, I decided to see what my dictionary - Merriam-Webster 10th Collegiate - had to say about our terms of choice. If this dictionary is the last word, the name PLANER is TOTALLY faulty. It is absent from the definitions. The verb PLANE is given no suitable meaning such as to make flat as with a PLANE, a tool which IS defined. On the other hand, FACE is given a definition which conforms to your usage very well.Now the funny part: to JOINT is defined as "to prepare...for joining by PLANING the edge. Remember: there was no definition for the verb PLANE!! That made my day!!To EDGE was given many definitions. "To give an edge to" may be considered applicable. It seems a stretch to apply the term to have the same definition as JOINT, but I suppose we could do that.It has been my experience that FACING and EDGING were terms used by those making items of textile fabrics. In light of my research today, it seems appropriate to force the WW tool making industry to rename jointer/planers as FACER/EDGERS and thickness planers as THICKNESS FACERS. Maybe someone should have forced them to do that when they made the very first ones. I suppose that we could call jointers EDGERS so that you don't have to hate something. It might still seem inappropriate to some to FACE on an EDGER. The abbreviated name would allow us to reduce the name of the THICKNESS FACER to only one word, however. Then there is the hand plane. WWers who use them will also have to FACE and Edge. No more PLANING!Given the condition of our language, I hope that it is not true that "Using the right terminology is crucial."Cadiddlehopper
I've been in the industry professionally since 1973 so it might be different for me. When you are giving someone directions on the phone or on paper it's crucial in my opinion that you are using the same terms to explain what you want done. I continually am fixing problems from others who have miscommunicated so it's an issue for me. A power feed jointer is called a facer so I prefer to use that term. It has a conveyor overhead with spring loaded steel fingers. I realize that different parts of the country and world use terms differently. Cramps are clamps in England and Europe. Some old text books use the term jointer/planer in my experience. Actually I looked at some even older sources like 1870 (I've got some old woodworkers professional trade magazines from the late 1800's). The term jointer is the common name. Jointer/planer is more typical of catalogs.
Edited 11/1/2006 7:31 am ET by RickL
Edited 11/1/2006 9:11 am ET by RickL
Thanks for clearing up my confusion on this.
This forum is great, I've been reading the threads over the last few days and found a wealth of information.
Once again,thanks everyone
Looked at your profile. You use this machinery in the arts/entertainment industry? OK. Maybe someday I'll know how you do that. Anyway, it looks as if the term FACER can't be used by us for these tools.Our discussion reminds me of a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon which pokes fun at turning nouns & adjectives into verbs. One says that verbing words weirds the language. It goes on to say that if we do it enough it will become impossible to communicate.Way back in the '50s I received a document which was written without using the correct word in even one case yet it communicated the story. I will attempt to make it an attachment. It is great fun to read it aloud to a group of like minded people.Cadiddlehopper
"I continually am fixing problems from others who have miscommunicated so it's an issue for me."
I think I can only agree with that one
"A power feed jointer is called a facer so I prefer to use that term. It has a conveyor overhead with spring loaded steel fingers."
We used to call them finger feed surface planers, but who's made them in the last 50 years?
"Cramps are clamps in England and Europe."
To confuse things we actually use both terms in the UK. Personally I refer to "G cramps", "sash cramps", etc.
Scrit
Scrit,
<< "Cramps are clamps in England and Europe."
To confuse things we actually use both terms in the UK....>>
Now I'm confused, and have a question: Does your clamp have a cramp?
;-)Tschüß!
Mit freundlichen holzbearbeitungischen Grüßen aus dem Land der Rio Grande!!
James
"Now I'm confused, and have a question: Does your clamp have a cramp?"
Nah! The only thing in my workshop with the cramps is me - or do I suffer from the clamps? ;-)
Using the right terminology is crucial in a commercial shop. Using the same (not necesarrily right) terminology in a shop is crucial. Your terminology is not necesarrily right. Different shops and different areas use different terminology. When I started woodworking some sixty years ago the correct term was jointer/planer. Made sense because you planed the face then jointed the edge. The British use much better and discriptive terms than we do.
Edited 10/31/2006 10:29 pm ET by tinkerer2
Jointer/Planer: Cadiddlehopper, you must have been around for a while. I think the term "jointer/planer" is an older term that isn't used much anymore except by us oldsters . The new term is jointer. The change, in my book, is a misnomer and doesn't make sense but is like some of the other modern term changes. I agree with you on your post. It should be emphasized that the thickness planer was never meant to straighten a board but only to make the two sides of the parallel after straightness has been attained on the jointer. I like to think of a jointer/planer as planing the face of the workpiece, then jointing one edge. Using the word planer for the machine that thicknesses is totally confusing.
Edited 10/31/2006 9:57 pm ET by tinkerer2
I like the way the English describe these machines. To my knowledge, what is referred to as a "jointer" in the US is called a "planer". What we in the US call a "planer" is called a "thicknesser" in the UK.Makes sense to me. A jointer does the same thing to a board as what I would do with a hand plane, and a planer changes the thickness of the board, implying that there is no real flattening function.
Engish Terminology: May not be perfect but it sure beats the terms used in the US.
If you run a board through a planer / thicknesser first, you may make the sides parallel, but you won't have addressed any twists or bows; i.e., the board could still be crooked.
Therefore, jointer first on one edge and one face. Now you have two sides flat and square to each other (if your machine is set up properly).
Then, run it through the planer/thicknesser to make the 2nd side parallel to the first side. Now you have a board that is both flat and parallel.
You can cut the 2nd edge with a table saw to make sure it is parallel to the first edge you jointed.
IMHO
Alan - planesaw
the material is question here was rough 8 x 8 hem/fir post. i didn't have access to heavy equipment to mill it into usable slabs, so i made several passes with a 16 1/2" makita circular saw to butcher them up. the posts were twisted, and flipping over to make the final cut made a mess of the boards.
the slabs were jagged and rough, so i ran them through a portable thickness planer to cut off all the roughness left by the first step above. i've also ripped the rough sides off with a bosch 10" portable table saw, and even with a new combo blade, it made that saw snort...but now they are ready to square.
the boards vary from 1 1/2" to 3" thick. (some will be a dining room table, others a mantle, still others a bar top, etc.)
i was taught in shop class to joint a face AND an edge, and since i'll be edge gluing to make tabletops (and ripping through my small saw is not that accurate) i thought i'd joint one face and BOTH edges to make ready for gluing.
this isn't a production shop, it's a hobby. and waste isn't an issue since the posts were free.
whatthejeez,
Wow, somewhere this conversation took a turn and I missed it. I was responding to "dangler."
He had no "material in question of 8x8s" that I saw in his first message.
And I am certainly no production shop, just a serious hobby, but I do joint and plane my lumber. As you said, joint one edge and one face. Then plane the other face.
Jointing both edges in preparation for a glue-up can be a disaster if the edges are not parallel. Hence, joint one edge, then use a tablesaw to saw the other edge to make it parallel.
Alan - planesaw
i was responding to dangler because he is my friend, and it was my project he was referring to.
I think you are misunderstanding what the planer and jointer are for.
The thickness planer makes one face parrallel to the other (reference). The problem here is that if the reference face is not flat (twisted, bowed, etc.) then the planed face will not be either.
The jointer flattens the boards, not just edges which is why the are usually 6"+. Of course if you try to flatten both sides there is no guarantee that they will be parrallel.
The usual procedure:
1. Face joint the board (make one face perfectly flat)
2. Edge joint, referencing to the flat face (make one edge square to flattened face)
3. Thickness board (makes other face parallel to the flat face, so now both are flat and parallel)
4. Rip to width with flat edge against fence (makes second edge parallel to the first, and therfore square to the other faces)
5. Crosscut to length.
This is my usual order. No redundant steps...
All of the correct info is in these posts. I think the terminology is what confuses folks.
A jointer flattens and straightens. (Which requires a bit of technique)
A planer is actually a thicknesser. All this machine does is reduce the thickness of your stock. It does NOT make the stock straight.
They should call these machines a Board Straightener and a Thickness Reducer. It would be a lot less confusing.
-Paul
"They should call these machines a Board Straightener and a Thickness Reducer. It would be a lot less confusing. "
We've gone part way towards that in the UK. Colleges teach people tpo refer to the machines as "surface planers" and "thicknessers" with combined function machines earning the soubriquet "planer/thickbesser".
Scrit
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