I don’t Know how this happens. I used the same plate jointer, and never moved any adjustments. My stock seems to be square and straight. Please help me, I am getting tired of this problem.
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Replies
Hi Miller,
Looks like you're using your biscuit joiner on edge grain gluing. An easy solution to your problem is not to even use biscuits at all. When you glue two boards together edge to edge, the glue joint is actually stronger than the wood itself if your using regular wood glue like Titebond. Another trick is to orient the grain pattern on the ends of your board opposite of each other. Meaning, if one board's end grain is arched upward, the next board's end grain should be arched downward. This will help level out the warping of all the boards over the entire panel.
As far as your misalignment on your boards, it looks like your biscuit joiner is out of alignment somehow. I've never had the problem you're facing so I can't speak from experience but maybe the fence on your biscuit joiner is not parallel to the blade causing the boards to rise over the length of the joint. Hope this helps!
Mike
Hi miller,
I keep looking at your pictures and I'm trying to figure out exactly what's going on. I'll stay away from the biscuit joiner problem because I already discussed the fact I really have no idea what's wrong with it. Instead, I'll recommend that you use extra clamps in your glue up. At the end of every joint where two board meet, you should use a c-clamp or small bar clamp to squeeze the two boards together. That will prevent some of the problems that you're having. Another suggestions is to make sure boards are face planed perfectly straight on a jointer. If you buy your lumber already surfaced on both sides (S2S), sometimes they'll warp little bit in the store as they acclimate to the humidity inside the store. It's better to buy your lumber a little bit thicker and dimension it with a jointer and planer if you can. Hope it help again!
Mike
Looks to me like your flipping some of the boards over. Suggest laying the boards on a table, orient end grain, then match face grain then hatch mark the surface for biscuit spacing and only use the plate jointer on that surface.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
I've had similar problems when the fence on the biscuit joiner wansn't pefectly parrallel to the blade. Even a little bit out of whack is exaggerated because you reverse the angle when making the cut on adjoining boards.
Hi Miller,
Not certain whether you jointed a face and edges before you used the plate jointer or not. The misalignment I see cold happen even if.
Sort of looks to me like a couple of the boards were flipped before assmebly. That is, the face the fence rested on is now the other way around.
Take care, Mike
A question: how do you joint (prepare) the edges of your boards before assembly (glue-up)?
Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Miller, I love the title that you gave to this post. How can I not try to help you?
What's the biscuit cutting procedure that you use? How is the machine being referenced to the work? Can you get good alignment in some test boards using scrap lumber?
OK Now that I am not so frustrated I may be able to explain things better. This is going to be the base to a cabinet I am building. I only have a six inch jointer so. I split two boards down the center in order to mill them out of rough stock. After they are milled I laid them out on top of my table saw, and matched them back the way the were before I split them. Matched the grain, laid them out exactly the way I want them glued up. Then at each joint I make a short mark perpendicular to the joint to align the jointer on. Then I mark the top with a triangle to make sure I when I am finished with the jointer that they go back the way I marked them. I have a Porter Cable 557 I bought brand new two weeks ago for another project I was working on ( I had the same problem on the last project, but not as severe). The reason I am using biscuits is to help align this so that I can glue it up at the same time, instead of gluing one joint at a time and waiting on glue to cure before gluing the next joint. I have not made any adjustment to this jointer, it is the same way it was when I pulled it out of the box. I have never checked the plate jointer either, because I have never used a plate jointer and don't know what to check. I belive my milling process was done correctly because the boards fit perfectly with no gaps. That is until I insert the biscuits, then they do not lay on the same plane.
A few points:1. Others have talked about the plate joiner technique; I have nothing to add except to say that you don't need a PJ to make this joint, it will not add any real strength to the joint (side to side glue up with aliphatic glue will be stronger than the wood on either side... ever see an antique table top disarticulate? I haven't and they were made with less effective glue and no biscuits). Also, there are better ways to align this joint if you want to do the glue up all at once.2. I am concerned that you may not be jointing your boards properly. If your jointer fence is 1 degree off of 90, and you assemble the joint the way you described, you could easily end up with a 7-10 degree arc in your glue-up, about a dovetai's worth- all of your errors will be additive. I would check and recalibrate my jointer tables and fence to make sure you are getting a flat datum face and a true perpendicular edge.3. Lay out your boards in preparation for jointing. Wherever two boards meet, write in pencil a number- start with 1, then on the other side of that joint write 2, the next joint 3, etc.: / 1//2 3//4 5//6 7//8 /each / represents the edge of a board, // represents a joint. Now joint all the boards- odd numbered edges get jointed with the number facing outwards, even numbers face the fence. Now when you assemble the boards (making sure all the numbers are where they should be), any slight errors from 90 degrees in the fence will CANCEL out rather than add up. If the fence is actually set at 89 degrees, the first edge will be jointed at 89 degrees, the second at 91 degrees... etc.4. Use cauls for your glue up. You can make them from 8/4 stock (or even freshly jointed 2x3s in a pinch). Just wax them and clamp them down on your boards like asandwich and you'll be fine.Good luck,Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
From what I thought I read it sounded like you resawed some rough lumber. BEcause you said that you cut one board into two boards. And then you matched the grain. So are you trying to book match the grai? Because if you resawed the timber then my guess is that your timber has moved. By resawing you release a lot of the internal stresses in the wood and it will move. Even if you surface all four sides right after resawing it will move again on you. You have to let the wood sit for at least a few days after you resaw it to allow for it to do all the moving it wants and then surface and joint it all. I hope that helps.Kaleo
http://www.kalafinefurniture.blogspot.com
Kaleo,
He didn't resaw. He ripped a wide board into two narrow boards, planed them on his jointer, and then edge glued them back into one wide board.Woody
Are you using biscuets that are the right size for the slots you are cutting? If too small they might allow more movement than you had planned on. Also, even though Norm and others talk of using these things to align edges, they usually say to "Help" align edges. They won't do the job on their own. Cauls and clamps help as others have noted. However, figuring out how to cut the slots a consistent distance from the face has to come first. For whatever reason, that isn't happening with your boards. I'd suggest cutting lots of slots on scrap til you figure it out.
Scotty
Hi Miller,
Firstly I agree with the other responses for reasons you could be getting the results shown and also have some additional thoughts.
I notice that some of the boards as well as being out of flush with the adjacent board are also tilted and not in the same plane.
How are you using the biscuit joiner? are you laying the wood flat on the bench and pushing the machine into the wood or are you clamping the wood edge facing up and pushing the biscuit jointer down onto the edge.
I would recommend placing the wood flat whenever you can. If you are pushing the machine down onto the edge you may be leaning and cutting the slot at an angle causing the misalinment of the boards.
Make sure you are not letting the motor twist the machine out of alignment when you turn it on, some have adjustable material grippers that can be screwed out to engage the wood more firmly.
Test the machine on scrap to make sure the slot is in the middle of the edge, otherwise if you flip some of the boards after cutting the slots you will get exactly this problem, the misalignment will be double the amount the slot is off center.
Most machines are set up for 3/4" stock with the slot in the middle of the edge, check your stock is 3/4" even though that may be what you purchased or set the gauge on the planer to calipers will confirm the thicknes for you.
Good luck and dont ever feel bad for asking others for help, together we are a team.
I dunno, and forgive me for being blunt, but I just dunno if yer apparent biscuit misalignment problem is the biggest of yer worries.
In the second picture, you have all the annular rings oriented in one direction.
As the tendency of warping of wood is for all the annular rings to straighten out, even if you succeed in flattening this piece, it's gonna wanna warp. The annular rings should alternate, and that will minimize the gross warpage yer set up is likely to produce.
All other things being equal, there are at least two ways that you can reproduce this error...
Flip a board over when biscuiting (this might well account for the malignemt of grain shown in the photos)
Reference the wrong side when biscuiting, or not be in the "clear" (eg you set up your slot on the "thick" end of the plank, but when you biscuit the thin end, the bench "lifts" yer slot closer to the top. I generally cut biscuit slots with strict conformity to the "reference" surface.That top fence HAS to be tight to the surface. I cut my slots with the piece over the edge of the bench to avoid that possibility
Yer showing errors of a magnitude well beyond merely having ####piece of sawdust under yer fence. Ergo- gotta likely be a procedural error
Betcha dollars to donuts that the "reference" faces got mixed up somewhere along the way.
Hey- that's why God invented belt sanders eh?
Eric
Cowtown,
The problem is if he flips those boards he be aligning flat sawn with rift/quarter sawn edges...and with seasonal variation..will have ridges between boards...regardless of biscuits or not.
In the second picture, you have all the annular rings oriented in one direction.
These boards were ripped down, because my jointer is not wide enough to mill the full width. I just matched up the boards the way they were ripped in order to match the grain. I will take my chance on them cupping. I think they will be fine, I want the grain to match. Thank you for your time and reply.
One other consideration, if a stable board is ripped, deep cut or otherwise faced or opened in any way there is a good chance it wiil move a little. I have sawn and faced pre WW2 timber from old furniture and had unpredictable reactions.
i think the need for alternating annular rings is greatly exagerated...
I say best side up and annular rings be damned.....
cs,
That's just crazy talk, man. :-))
Ray
I agree with you.
When I am gluing up boards, it's "Best side up".
When I am laying sod, it's "Green side up".MelMeasure your output in smiles per board foot.
And now you are going to get an entirely unbiased reply: because I have not got a biscuit joiner and care not a fig for "flipping" boards to alternate growth rings. I do care about timber quality and condition, and the appearance of the grain-not about alternating rings .
So, it seems to me from those pictures of oak? boards that the biscuit slots 1) may not be in the centre of the edge and 2)may not always always be referenced to either the face or the bottom of each board- it must be one or the other, not a combination.
Now and again I have had to join up tops with boards that may not be quite straight and have elected to use loose tongues for alignment purposes-much the same as biscuits can do. I have used a router for this , and having thicknessed the boards to a consistent thickness, have made reasonably sure that the slots are cut in the centre of the edge- BUT, just in case of gremlins, or a need to turn a board over for a better grain match at the last moment, I always mark each board to indicate the up side and use this face to reference to rout from every time, as a double insurance.
The slots will need to be quite close to the ends , with one or more in between if the boards are not too straight....
Ofcourse, there could be other reasons for that mis-alignment, such as the b/joiner itself not staying set, or the operator himself not setting it right, or indeed his work method. Not to mention clamping procedure where again it pays to always work from one surface which must be seen to be "kissing" the bar of the sash clamp.
Then again, if there is a long bendy board condition, it may be preferred to only join two or three at most at a time so that you are not trying to manage too many edges at once i.e for a top with say 5 boards to be glued up one would do it in three stages....might take a tad longer , but in the end there will be no teeth gnashing over mis-alignments....
Hope that helps.Philip Marcou
Edited 2/25/2007 4:26 am by philip
A common misconception in woodworking is that you have to dowel or biscuit joint edge grain to edge grain. In reality you are actually weakening the joint somewhat. If you are using biscuits on a tabletop I have seen the outline of those little footballs in the finish when a top is completed. If you are not able to run your glueups through a planer, I would suggest you use what a called cawls to help during glue-up. All they are are boards used on edge, clamped perpendicular to your glue lines. Using an F-style or c clamps with wax paper or saran wrap to prevent the cawl from being glued to your top, put cawls under and above your top before you use you bar clamps. Use a deadblow hammer to get them as flat as possible and then start tightening your bar clamps firmly but don't reef on them. A lot of people will over tighten bar clamps. Start tightening your bar clamps from the middle out and keep checking to make sure everything is still flat. Sounds complicated, but it is really easy, even by yourself.
miller
sometimes this happens to me when (1) I let the weight of the joiner tilt the fence end up, makeing the slot at an angle, that is ( the plunge happens so fast you may not notice); or (2) not having the jointed edges square. Just a couple of thoughts.
I wonder if you are putting enough down force on the nose of the tool. Perhaps tilting as you go in. This would explain why there is not a consistent angle of misalignment.
Its up to you as to using biscuits for edge jointing. I don't. Same for worrying about annular rings. I just look at how the face will show.
M,
Assuming you do want to ue biscuits for alignment (not necessary but sometimes a help; not here just yet <G>) perhaps a process of elimination will help?
* You already eliminated the stock as the problem; those boards do look of even thickness and square.
* I think you can assume the problem isn't a fence not parallel with the blade, as that amount of mismatch would need the degree of non-parallelism to be very large; and you would be unlikely to get the slots to mate on to the biscuits at all.
* As mentioned in other posts, you do need to put the boards together with the slot-making reference faces all facing the same way (up or down) as when the slots were cut. If you are doing this then......
..... more info is needed about your technique, specifically whether you reference slots from the top of the board with the joiner's fence; or from a flat surface using the joiner's base.
If you use the fence:
* Is the fence slipping on its posts when used?
* is the top of the plank you are referencing from flat and free of debris?
* Are you sometimes allowing whatever the plank rests on to raise the joiner's base and hence raise its fence up off the plank, as you cut?
If you use the joiner's base:
* Is the reference surface that the plank and the joiner's base rest on truly flat?
* Are the plank and the joiner's base held down firmly onto the reference surface at all times during the cutting?
* Is the reference surface free of anything that could raise the plank but not the joiner (or vice versa)?
Hopefully one of these questions will reveal the problem when you answer it.
NB do these mismatch-ledges occur to the same degree for the full length of the planks or do they vary in height along their length?
Lataxe
Hi miller,
It appears to me , from the photos, that your stock is cupped and/or twisted. Did you flatten it with a jointer? Cut it all apart and check flatness of each piece with a pair of winding sticks. I'll bet you will see your problem. I don't think it's a clamping or biscuiting problem.
Paul
I don't think it is cupped or twisted. I just posted a reply to Sapwood that explained things better check it out. Thank for the reply.
I have a lamello top 10 that is years old .One of its "features" is that the slot is not centred on a piece of 19mm material when using the flip down fence. To reference on the top surface of the board the base of the machine base hangs below the board.Now if the board is flat on the bench for some of the cuts and overhanging for others you get the slots referred to different faces giving that effect.As previous posts have stated flipping the boards etc are other sources of error.
I think this could be part of the problem. I used this jointer on my last project, and had a similar problem. This time I held the stock over the edge of the bench to prevent this from happening, and I think maybe I might not have been able to hold the stock and the jointer steady while making the cuts. Thank you for your reply and your time.
The good news is that you can simply cut new slots next to the one's already cut. Or, plug the existing with buscuits, let them dry, shave off the protruding part and then recut. I would recommend you practice with some scraps of plywood to make sure you know how this tool works.
I've seen my students make the same mistake many times.
With most plate jointers there is a handle above the fence and the motor to hold onto. The obvious thing to do is put one hand on the handle and the other around the motor. My students, not realizing how, often tend to lift up the tool as they push the blade in. Pushing with both hands naturally tries to rotate the tool over the board, lifting the blade relative to the board side.
Take your hand off the handle above the blade, and use it instead to apply pressure down on the flat part of the fence against the top of the board. That pressure will keep the tool from rising as you push the motor in to cut the slot.
Lasty, make sure you've locked the fence into position. If it isn't tightened down, it may vibrate up as you use the tool, with the last slots you cut being higher than the first.
Dry clamp all your projects together once before applying any glue. You'll notice misalignments such as your pictures show and have a chance to "fix" the problem. When my students discover their error, I usually suggest they simply leave out the problem biscuits when doing the final clampup with glue.
Good luck.
4D
Edited 2/25/2007 6:31 pm ET by 4DThinker
"Take your hand off the handle above the blade, and use it instead to apply pressure down on the flat part of the fence against the top of the board. That pressure will keep the tool from rising as you push the motor in to cut the slot. "
This is the problem. The boards in the picture were dry fit. I went back and made sure I held firmly down on the fence, and I had no problem. This piece was the bottom of a cabinet I am building. I since have milled up one of the sides, and had no problem. I was just not being sure that the fence was firmly in the correct position. Thank you for your time, and reply.
Very glad I could help.I advise my students to use the plate jointer for the exact same reason you did. It allows them to clamp up several pieces in bar clamps while the boards stay aligned. That said, the next mistake they'll make is to fail and consider where those biscuits are when eventually cutting their glued piece to final dimension.
4D
That said, the next mistake they'll make is to fail and consider where those biscuits are when eventually cutting their glued piece to final dimension.
Yes, but that problem will be in my next post. Thank you for your time.
I agree w/ Miller and have had the same problem with the DW. The top handle is only good for carrying the thing around. Trying to go too fast will also detract from slot accuracy. Instead of using the trigger lock to keep it running I find if I pull the trigger for each slot that the fraction of a second I'm waiting for the motor to spool up to speed allows me to improve my grip and alignment of the tool.John O'Connell - JKO Handcrafted Woodworking
The more things change ...
We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
Petronious Arbiter, 210 BC
Are you sure your biscuit jointer is locating off the top surface of the wood and the bottom of the machine is not touching your bench. A friend of mine used to lay his boards on his work bench and then locate the bottom of the jointer on the bench and needless to say he got very erratic results a lot like I see in your pictures. When doing 3/4" or thinner boards I have to raise the board off the bench or let it hang over so the jointer doesn't touch the bench.
If the ends are where the problem is most evident, I bet it is bowing in the wood. Clamp down the boards when you cut the biscuits or weight them down with tape wrapped bricks. Also, make sure that the surface that the boards are lying on is free of dust or chips.
Is the base of your biscuit cutter clean? Dried glue can hide in plain sight. Also is the adjustment mechanism tightened? Not sure what kind you have, but there may be some play in your setup.
I have made several large hope chests. Some in the 70s. None of them have separated or warped at all. No biscuits used. I presume you are using the biscuits to help you align the boards to minimize scraping, planing, sanding, etc... I suggest cauls laid across the boards are better for ensuring proper alignment of the boards. Put 3 or 4 of them under the boards and 3 or 4 across the top.
For long panels that are visible I wouldn't use them because they can cause bubbles in the top if you use too much glue.
Regards,
Ken
"Do as you would be done by." C.S. Lewis
As indicated by the picture, you glued them with all the growth pattern the same way. This will make the glued joints cup or distort as your pictures show. Using end cap stock while glueing could have helped to make the ends parellel as one of the others noted. Clamping pressure is another issue, along with placement of the clamps alternating top and bottom along the length of the glued pieces. Another problem that was noted was the use of bisquits and your bisquit tool. Pay careful attention to the making of the bisquit joints the same distance from the top surface, any time the bisquit tool is not parellel to that surface will distort the joint. A simple tool to tune your jointer blades the same height is using a dial indicator on it. These sell for as little as $25.00 and are easy to use for making sure all the blades are the same height on the blade holding arbor. Make sure that your fence on the jointer is set at 90 degrees, using a steel square to check this.
This is the hard part that I recommend you do. On your table saw, saw the glued joints, then re-joint the edges for glueing. Alternate the growth rings so they oppose each other, this may give you a different grain pattern on the finished surface, but you can get a pretty close match if you can alternate the boards to get the desired effect when the piece is finally glued together. All of this preparation is done before you glue and clamp. I hope this helps! When you get the project done, post a picture of it on this site, all of us want to see the final result.
Miller,
This might sound just a bit strange, Whenever my biscuit jointer feels like having a mind of it's own, I simple readjust the fence so the slot gets just a bit wider so the boards have room for some adjustment to make them perfectly flat to one another. I also put clamps on the ends at the glue joints so they won't slide by one another while their drying.
I hope maybe this might help in some small way,Good luck'
Sincerely,
Jim at Clark Customs
What happened is that on or two of your boards got flipped upsidedown. to prevent this mark on bot sides of one line A------A and the next line B------B
Miller,
I relies that I left a message before but after a little further consideration I hope just maybe I might be able to shed a little more light on the subject.
First of all when laying out for the biscuit slots,be sure for instance on a "3/4 thick board that your biscuit slots center or the center of the blade is "3/8.
Now just to be double sure,flip the board over so now the bottoms facing up and recut the slot,if your biscuit jointers set up correctly the slot should be perfectly on top of the slot cut from the opposite side but if not the slot will be a bit wider which is ok too because biscuits swell massively big and will fill the void as long as the void in question isn't really huge..
Now when clamping after you've glued up the panel be sure to orient the clamps one on the top of the panel that's being glued the next clamp should be on the opposite side and so on until you get to the other end of the panel. Be sure that the panel that your gluing is tight to the clamps. If a bow should occur on a corner that you cant push tight to the bar clamp by hand ,you can use a ratchet clamp and pull it tight.
I hope some of this might be of some help,
Good Luck,
Jim at Clark Customs
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