Drawknives

Drawknives consist of a 5″- to 14″-long knife blade with a tang at each end that is bent at slightly less than a right angle to the blade. Handles are attached to both ends. It is almost always pulled (hence the name) with the bevel up, but it can be pushed if needed. Most have a straight blade, but some are arched either upward (mostly for peeling the outer bark off of logs or coopering staves) or downward for hollowing chair seats, shovels and such. The latter, when approaching a segment of a circle, is commonly referred to amongst chairmakers as a scorp. The edge is usually a convex arc.

The drawknife is perfect for bringing a length of wood to a round or oval shape. They were and still are used in the initial phases of hewing the spindles in the backs of Windsor chairs to their unique shape. Wheelmakers and coopers also employed drawknives extensively — the former for wheel spokes and the latter to make the staves a uniform arc on the inside and outside of a barrel.

In use, the handles allow you to put your upper body and arm strength into slicing thick shavings. One must pay close attention to grain direction, or splitting the workpiece along the grain will result. Avoiding this often entails shaping half the piece in one direction and then reversing the cuts for the other half.

A number of companies still make drawknives today, and serviceable examples in good condition are some of the easiest tools to find on the antique market.

Spokeshaves

A spokeshave is a finishing tool. It refines a drawknife’s work to its final shape with a smooth surface. Spokeshaves come in two types — those with wood bodies and those made entirely from metal. The former can be thought of as a wooden jig with handles at each side that surrounds a blade and limits the thickness of the shaving it generates. Wood spokeshaves have a very low attack angle and require close attention to grain direction. Metal spokeshaves are like a small plane with the handles at the sides. The blade is secured bevel-down and bedded at about 50 to 55 degrees, making it less likely to run with the grain.

While spokeshaves are more commonly pulled, they may be pushed when necessary. Each type of shave has strong partisans.

Traditionally, wood spokeshave blades had a square, tapered tang extending upward at each end of the blade. This mated to like holes in the wood stock and got tighter as it was pushed (and often hammered lightly) into place. Since the 19th century, some wood spokeshaves have sported threaded tangs that were secured with a binding post nut. A screw next to the through hole in the shave adjusted where the blade came home, thereby affecting the thickness of the cut.

Most experienced users of wood or metal spokeshaves adjust the blade to take a heavier cut on one end (usually the left) for quick material removal. Sliding the shave steadily sideways as the work proceeds generates progressively finer shavings and a smooth finish.

Modern workers may not need to use a drawknife but may still find a spokeshave useful for an odd rounding job or to refine a roundover made by a router. Making a bullnose on the edge of a board with a roundover bit that is a bit under- or oversized for the thickness of the board comes to mind. Today, a metal spokeshave is the best bet for most woodworkers, unless they are working with green wood.

The post Drawknives and Spokeshaves appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

Click Here to Download a PDF of the Layout.

The post Wolverine Grinding Jig Set-up appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The post PROJECT: Rolling Task Light appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The post Choosing the Best Tormek Sharpening System for Your Shop appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

At that point you’ll face a choice: learn to saw and chop them by hand — the classic method. Or buy a dovetail jig and whip them out with a router instead. Both are entirely viable options, but router-cut dovetails require less hand-and-eye coordination. They’re also quick to churn out, once your jig and router setup are carefully dialed in. If this power tool method seems a better fit for you, here’s what to keep in mind.

On the Level

When I started routing dovetails 20 or so years ago, it didn’t take long to learn a few humbling lessons you may face, too. First, dovetail jigs aren’t panaceas for simplicity. If you hope to unpack a new dovetail jig on a Saturday morning and be milling flawless joints in an hour or two, temper your enthusiasm. To cut a properly fitting joint, most jigs will require that you fine-tune a combination of settings on both the jig and the router bit depth. The trouble is, achieving these critical settings isn’t always quick or easy to understand.

Part of this challenge comes from the nature of dovetails themselves, regardless of how they are cut: pins or tails must fit their sockets within close tolerances. Joints with repeating geometry like these are also subject to cumulative error. Settings can’t begin to drift, even in the slightest, over the width of the parts or the joint will be progressively thrown out of registration. The wider the joint, the more important that every router pass is done with precision.

Then there’s the matter of a jig’s ease of use. I don’t envy the engineers who’ve been tasked to make their company’s dovetail jig simple to set up and operate, more versatile than the competition and still priced affordably for the average home-shop woodworker. It would be no small order! Some jig designs show the spit and polish of brilliant engineering: they’re a breeze to dial in and systematically troubleshoot so you know clearly what to tweak next. Others can be more enigmatic, suffering from design shortcomings or cryptic instruction manuals.

Thankfully, I’ve seen dovetail jigs become generally more user-friendly over the years, and some fine new jigs have come to market, too. You’ll probably also be able to find YouTube videos for just about any dovetail jig you buy that can clarify details in the manual or offer tips and tricks to shorten your learning curve. With any jig, plan on making several test cuts before expecting a piston-fitting dovetail. And be patient with your process. You’ll get there eventually!

How Dovetail Jigs Work

Dovetail jigs are really just elaborate examples of template routing. The router’s path is limited by a template to cut a specific pattern of pins or tails and the sockets in between. In most cases, you feed the router over the template, which is mounted on top of the jig’s housing. For a few jigs, a handheld router is unnecessary: the template with a workpiece clamped to it is inverted and guided over the router bit on a router table instead.

Depending on the joint, workpieces are presented to the jig’s template with either the board’s edge facing up or a face side up. Clamps in front or on top of the jig’s housing lock boards in place for routing. In the case of half-blind joints, both the pin and tail boards are cut simultaneously. For through dovetails, the tail and pin boards are cut with separate templates, router bits and setups, one board at a time.

Most dovetail jigs require that a guide bushing be mounted to the router’s baseplate to follow the openings in the template. Or the bit may have an integral pilot bearing on top that takes the place of the guide bushing. You’ll also need an 8° or 14° dovetail router bit, depending on the joint’s geometry. For through dovetails, a straight-cutting router bit is also required. These bits are often provided with the jig, as are the guide collar or collars required to operate them. But standard aftermarket bits are suitable options, too, provided the cutting angle is correct for the joint style.

A mid-sized or larger router with a 1/2″-capacity collet is the right choice for making the demanding cuts these dovetail jigs require. I find that the lower center of gravity of a fixed-base router makes it easier to handle and preferable to a plunge router. The fixed base makes precise depth-of-cut changes a little easier too — you’re not working against the spring compression of a plunge router this way.

Fixed-template Jigs

There are two primary families of dovetail jigs, based on their template style. Fixed-template dovetail jigs, like Rockler’s, uses one template for cutting the tails of a through dovetail pattern (and both the pins and tails of a half-blind joint) with a dovetail-shaped router bit. The template’s slots are straight and parallel. For through dovetails, a second interchangeable template enables the “pin” side of the joint to be cut using a straight router bit instead of the dovetail cutter. Here, the template’s fingers are angled, rather parallel, in order to mill angled faces on the pins that fit between the tails.

The templates that come standard with a fixed-template jig typically cut a pattern of pins and tails that have the same size and spacing. But optional templates can expand the range of joints to patterns with larger tails, irregular spacing between the pins and tails and even box joint styles.

Adjustable-template Jigs

One of the benefits of learning to hand-cut dovetails is that you can choose any pattern of pins and tails that suits your preference and application. That’s impossible to do with a fixed-template jig; spacing is always predetermined by the template, and it can’t be changed.

If customizing your dovetail joint layouts is important to you, an adjustable-template jig can help. Here’s what makes this family of jigs distinct: a collection of paired metal fingers create the template that guides the router bit in a handheld router. One end of each pair of fingers forms a parallel slot for cutting tails with a dovetail bit. The other end of the fingers are angled to guide the pin cuts of the joint using a straight router bit. The same metal fingers will cut a range of joints in both half-blind and through dovetail styles.

Each pair of fingers can be unlocked and opened or closed to create wider or narrower pins and tails. Even better, adjusting one end of the fingers automatically dials in the other end for the mating cut. Pairs can be spread apart from other pairs along the jig’s mounting bars to vary the joint layout and spacing however you like. Once you set the pattern, tails are cut with the template oriented outward in the jig. To cut the pins, just flip the template over and reinstall, and switch router bits.

Other Variations

If you’d rather not steer a heavy router over the top of a conventional dovetail jig, a “top-down” option, such as the RTJ400 from Leigh Industries might be a better choice. Here, you can use a router table and benefit from its larger work surface to support the jig when feeding workpieces through their cuts. Effectively, the jig is a fixed template with an integral clamping system. It functions similarly to a conventional fixed-template jig, just upside down.

Another even more streamlined option for dovetail jigs amounts to a pair of fixed templates and nothing more. With these, you fasten a piece of wood to each template to serve as a backup board during cutting. It also provides a clamping surface for workpieces. Keller & Company innovated this “template only” dovetailing method in the late 1970s, and it remains one of the simplest systems on the market.

Aside from their ease of use, there’s no limit to the width of workpieces you can rout with Keller’s aluminum or phenolic dovetailing templates. With other dovetail jig styles, workpieces must be narrower than the clamping apparatus that holds them in place. Depending on the jig, that might only be 12″ — too narrow for large projects.

Dovetailing Challenges

As I suggested at the outset, dialing a dovetail jig in for accuracy usually takes some trial and error. Shifting the jig’s template slightly forward or backward, changing the bit’s depth of cut or altering how workpieces are offset from one another inside the jig all influence how well the joint parts align and fit together. Here are a few of the common problems you’ll probably encounter when working with your jig. If you’re just getting started, expect several or even all of these situations to occur sooner or later.

– Overly loose or tight joints. A properly made half-blind or through dovetail joint should slip together without noticeable gaps, but you shouldn’t have to pound them together either. Overly tight fits on a dry joint will only cause you more trouble, once glue is applied and the wood begins to swell. Conversely, loose joints are inherently weak and look sloppy, too.

What’s the fix? Typically, loose or tight joints are the result of a router bit that’s set too deeply (loose fit) for the cut or not deep enough (tight fit). On the next test joint, try a tiny change to your router’s depth of cut, and you’ll probably see a noticeable improvement in how the parts come together. Sneak up on a “push” fit, making only slight depth adjustments each time. On a good day, it may take at least two or three more test cuts after the first try before you’ll achieve a proper joint.

– Half-blind joints don’t fit together flush. It’s common for the tail board of half-blind joints to either slide too far into the sockets of the pin board or not far enough. In these situations, turn your attention to the template’s depth-of-cut setting — not the router bit. A tail board that embeds too deeply into the pin board means the template is allowing the bit to cut too far. Reset the template further forward on the jig housing and try again. Or if the tail board won’t push all the way home, the bit isn’t cutting far enough into the pin board. Move the template backward a smidge and make another test cut. In either case, the amount of mismatch between the parts is the distance you should reset the template.

– Part edges misalign. You can see that the edge of this joint’s pin board stands out from the tail board when assembled. In these situations, make sure your pin and tail boards are precisely the same width. Misaligned parts might also indicate that a stop on the jig needs to be adjusted a nudge. If the offset is only minor, the problem might not be worth tweaking the jig; a few swipes with a hand plane or a pass or two over the jointer could be the quicker fix.

– Pins or tails grow or shrink across the joint. Here’s a dastardly problem I once encountered. It occurred well past the stage where my dovetail jig was tuned and cutting beautifully. Some half-blind dovetails on a figured maple drawer I was routing drifted from 3/8″-long tails on one end of a joint to nearly 5/8″ long on the other end. The culprit: my bit was slipping ever so slightly out of the collet in the tough maple, cut by cut. I hope this catastrophe never happens to you, but learn from my mishap: be sure to use a clean router collet in good condition, and periodically check it for tightness as you work — not just before you begin. Dull bits, tough woods, loose collets or simple expansion and contraction of the collet as it heats up and cools off during use all can result in slipping bits…and ruined workpieces.

Tips for Success

Here are a few more tidbits of hard-fought wisdom that might help ease your dovetailing process:

– Take time when preparing your stock. It’s crucial that boards are flat, of uniform thickness and have square ends and edges. Otherwise, prepare for “garbage in, garbage out,” as they say.

– Read and reread your jig’s manual. Unless you use a dovetail jig routinely, you won’t memorize its nuances or probably even keep it set up for use. Make the manual your friend.

– Change settings one at a time and incrementally. A quick way to get befuddled with a dovetail jig is to tweak too many variables at once. Ask any experienced user…

– Save your best sample joints. When a test joint fits just right, by all means save it for future reference. Mark the parts with any relevant information — bit type and depth, template setting, router used, etc. — that can help you replicate the scenario next time. Life is short, so work smarter, not harder.

The post Dovetail Jigs: Handy Options to Handwork appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

With its narrow blade, the band saw excels at cutting smooth curves. For nonsymmetrical shapes and workpieces made up of multiple curves, cutting freehand usually does the trick. As long as you keep it slow and steady you can follow your cutline pretty closely, and then clean up the results later with sanding. But even with the most careful sawing, following the cutline for a perfect circle, the most basic of symmetrical shapes, can be daunting — the results are seldom perfect. However, with a simple jig that you can make quickly and easily, you’ll be able to cut an exact circle every time on the band saw without the need to follow a cutline. In fact, you won’t even need to draw the circle on your workpiece, so you can leave your compass in a drawer.

STEP 1: To create the jig, cut a piece of sheet stock to the width of your band saw’s table. For circles up to 16″ in diameter, a jig 10″ to 12″ long is fine. I prefer laminated material such as melamine, as it allows your workpiece to slide easily while cutting, but regular plywood or other sheet stock with a smooth surface will work fine. Center the jig on your band saw’s table — the edges of the jig should be flush with the edges of the table — and slide it till it just touches the blade. Make a mark on the front edge of the jig even with the tips of the blade teeth, as in Photo 1.

STEP 2: Starting at your mark, use a reliable square to continue the line across the surface of the jig as in Photo 2. You can see here that I’ve drilled holes into the jig’s side edges that will accommodate a pair of fence clamps to secure the jig to the band saw’s table. Now, measuring from the front edge, make a series of marks 1″ apart along this line.

Step 3: With a 1/4″ or 3/8″ bit in your drill press, bore holes exactly on each of your marks (see Photo 3). Drill just short of going all the way through the jig. When cutting the circle, the workpiece will pivot on a short length of dowel inserted into one of these holes. Because the workpiece rotates at these holes, each marks the exact center of the circle, with the distance from the front edge of the jig determining the circle’s radius. Thus, the first hole drilled at 1″ will be the pivot for a 2″ circle; the hole drilled at 2″ gives a 4″ circle, and so on. You might find it helpful to mark your jig with a permanent marker as I’ve done here.

STEP 4: Place the jig on your band saw’s table so your line of holes is perpendicular to the blade and even with the tips of the blade’s teeth. A piece of paper held behind the blade, as I’m doing in Photo 4, makes it easier to see the teeth. With the jig correctly positioned, clamp it securely to the saw’s table.

STEP 5: Cut a short length of 1/4″ or 3/8″ hardwood dowel for your pivot. This dowel should be short enough that it will fit into a hole drilled on the underside of your workpiece but still allow the workpiece to rest flat on the table. For this example, I’ve decided to cut an 8″ circle, so in Photo 5 I’m slipping the dowel into the hole that is 4″ from the front edge of the jig. (Remember, the distance from the blade is the circle radius.)

STEP 6: Cut a workpiece slightly larger than the desired circle; for our 8″ circle here I’ve cut a workpiece measuring 8-1/2″ x 8-1/2″. Now, measure exactly 4″ from the center of the front edge of the workpiece and drill a hole sized to accept the pivot dowel (see Photo 6). The purpose you have in mind for your circle will determine how deeply to drill this hole: For an unblemished top surface, don’t drill all the way through. If the top surface isn’t critical — if you’re cutting wheels, for example, that require an axle going all the way through the circle — it’s OK to drill all the way through the workpiece. Note here that I’ve marked an arrow pointing to the front edge to keep things straight.

STEP 7: Drop the workpiece onto the dowel as in Photo 7, making sure to keep the front edge oriented toward the blade. If you’ve done everything correctly, the workpiece will fall into place with the front edge just kissing the blade.

STEP 8: Turn on the saw, and rotate your workpiece smoothly on its pivot as in Photo 8 to cut a perfect 8″ circle. When the circle is complete, power down the saw and let the blade come to a full stop before removing the workpiece and waste.

For the jig in this example I’ve drilled the pivot holes at 1″ intervals, but feel free to set your jig up to create circles of any desired size. Just remember that the pivot holes should always reflect the radius of your desired circle. Also, if you think you may use your circle-cutting jig frequently, consider attaching a cleat to the underside that will fit the miter slot on your band saw’s table to make setup faster and easier.

The post Cutting Circles on the Band Saw appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

1. Carving the easy way. From time to time, a carved panel just might look wonderful in a piece of casework: a pair of doors, perhaps with matching motifs; a backsplash that has a geometric pattern repeating across its length; a carved architectural component. If carving is outside your wheelhouse of woodworking skills, a CNC router can come to your rescue. Those carved accents can enhance your project, and you get the credit!

2. Drilling is boring. Let’s say you have a couple hundred holes to drill for a cribbage board. It’s a doable job with a drill/driver or a drill press, but an arduous one. Now imagine making five cribbage boards for holiday gifts: you’ll have 1,000 holes to drill! If done by hand, just imagine how tedious the task would be! Not for a CNC. It will drill holes all day long without complaint.

3. CNC simplifies complex interfaces between workpieces. For example, Woodworker’s Journal once presented a Longworth Chuck project for woodturning with many curved slots that need to perfectly relate to one another. Unless they align precisely, the chuck won’t open and close smoothly. A CNC’s precision enables it to machine slots like these accurately, upping your odds for success the first time while also reducing your stress.

4. “May I have five more?” Have you ever agreed to build a bunch of things for your child’s school or for a church function? After you have completed the 20th little widget and you are staring down another 100 to go, you think to yourself: “There has got to be a more efficient way…” It’s CNC. Set the machine to work in the background to free yourself for more enjoyable shop tasks.

5. Consider it a sign! Of course, one of the best uses of CNC technology in the home shop is for sign-making. It can machine awards, cabin signs, humorous gifts, address plaques and much more. Most home shop CNCs come with sign-making programming already preloaded, along with fancy fonts and scripts with the lettering properly spaced. Here’s a moneymaking opportunity!

The post CNC Routing: Five Fast Facts appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

But, if you want to produce flat faces, edges and square reference surfaces in a fraction of the time, a power jointer will get the job done with minimal skill and effort. For most of us, it’s the more practical approach for processing rough lumber. And I’ll bet that if our predecessors had had the option to use a jointer, many of them would have been happy to trade their hand planes for a powered alternative. Here’s a quick study on this most beneficial machine.

What It Can and Can’t Do

A jointer is designed to flatten and square; those are its primary tasks. Preparing rough stock typically involves jointing a reference face first, then flattening an adjacent edge. A jointer is not an accurate thicknessing machine — that’s a planer’s job — nor will it keep two faces or edges parallel to one another. It’s possible to cut rabbets, tapers and chamfers on a jointer too, but generally, other tools are better choices. So, a jointer’s vitae of skills is actually rather short. But what it does well is crucial to woodworking.

How a Jointer Works

If you flip a hand plane upside down and face its knob to the right, you’re on your way to understanding how a jointer works. Its iron frame is made up of three big components: a center base casting and two movable tables. The infeed table on the right (on a hand plane, the portion of the sole ahead of the blade) supports workpieces as they’re fed into the machine’s rotating cutterhead, and the outfeed table on the left (the rest of the hand plane’s sole behind the blade) keeps stock stabilized and on track as it exits the cutterhead.

There’s a dynamic relationship between the infeed and outfeed tables and the cylinder- shaped cutterhead. When a jointer is properly tuned up, the surface of its outfeed table is precisely flush with the jointer’s knives or cutting inserts at their highest point of rotation (called top dead center — TDC). That way, boards leaving the cutterhead continue to be supported at the same elevation as they were milled, ensuring flatness. The infeed table, on the other hand, must be adjusted lower than the cutterhead’s TDC in order for surfacing to occur. This depth-of-cut can be set from just thousandths of an inch to 1/8″ or more, depending on how much stock you want to remove with each pass.

Regardless of depth of cut, it’s critical that both the infeed and outfeed tables are parallel to one another across their width and along their length. If they aren’t co-planer, the machine can’t render board surfaces flat.

A jointer’s cast-iron fence, located beside the tables, can be adjusted laterally across them for working with narrow stock or to expose only a portion of the cutterhead. It also can be tilted off of square for joining angled edges. However, the fence is typically kept at 90° so the machine can do its main task of squaring faces to edges.

Located beneath its spring-loaded, pivoting guard, a jointer’s cutterhead spins at around 5,000 to 6,000 rpm to help deliver smooth cuts and minimal tearout on any wood grain. One or two drive belts deliver power from the machine’s motor, hiding inside the closed stand. Stationary jointers employ quiet, long-lasting induction motors. Benchtop models have noisier universal motors, similar to corded circular saws and routers.

As surfaces are flattened, accumulating debris falls down a ramp inside the stand and out through a 4″ dust port. Jointers create a mountain of wood chips and dust in no time — second only to a thickness planer or lathe. So, for shop cleanliness and cleaner air, they need to be connected to a dust collector with as short a run of hose or ductwork as possible.

If you’re lucky enough to have a spacious wood shop, your jointer might be able to stay in one place all the time. But when it has to be moved — and sooner or later that time will come — you’ll appreciate having casters underneath to help roll its hundreds of pounds around. Some machines come with casters built into the stand. Or, you can add an aftermarket mobile base to any jointer.

Cutterhead Options

Up until the early 2000s, the cutterheads on all but industrial-size jointers had the same basic design: three or four single-edged, straight-bladed steel knives that sat in pockets in the cutterhead. You can still find these cutterheads today on some jointers. As long as those knives are sharp, the design works fine. But, as soon as the knives nick or dull, the task of servicing them becomes difficult. That’s because reinstalling and setting fresh knives can require the patience of Job and the precision of a Swiss watch maker. Each knife must be set square to the jointer tables from end to end and at precisely the same height as one another. Combinations of springs, recessed set screws and gib bars with multiple screws holding the knives in place only compound the problem of installation. Unless you do it often, setting traditional jointer knives is a big hassle.

Jointer cutterhead maintenance and performance took a quantum leap forward when manufacturers began to offer helical (also often called spiral) cutterheads with replaceable inserts as options. Unlike a straightknife head, spiral heads are equipped with rows of carbide inserts that have four sharp edges. Pockets in the cutterhead automatically set them to correct TDC, and a single star-drive screw holds each insert in place. When an insert nicks or dulls, it has three more sharp edges that can be accessed as easily as loosening the screw and rotating the carbide. Inserts are also cheap to replace.

Each row of cutters presents itself at a bias to the wood, instead of straight across, to create a shearing action that cuts figured and interlocked grain more cleanly. While purchasing a helical-equipped jointer will cost hundreds of dollars or more than a conventional straight-knife model, it’s an investment you’ll appreciate — both for maintenance and when you’re jointing figured or difficult-grain stock. It’s an improvement that surely will make straight-knife cutterheads obsolete on new jointers at some point, probably sooner than later.

Machine Sizes, Styles

If you’re in the market for a jointer, its cutterhead style is one important consideration. Another decision you face is its maximum width of cut. Jointers are manufactured with 6″, 8″, 10″, 12″ and even 16″ cutterhead lengths. The size determines how wide a board face you can join in a single pass. Obviously, longer cutterheads offer more capacity and can prevent you from needing to rip wide stock narrower in order to flatten it. As cutterhead lengths go up, so does the overall table length of the machine, to a point. So, while a 6″ jointer might offer a 50+”-long table, an 8″ model usually provides several more feet of table length. Longer tables are a big advantage when you need to flatten longer stock.

The counterpoint here, not surprisingly, is cost. As machine sizes increase, their price tags spike upward, too. For instance, an 8″ helical-head jointer may cost around $1,500, but a 12″ machine with the same cutterhead style can set you back $4,000. With those numbers in mind, occasional ripping and re-gluing may be a fair trade-off to buying a more-than-you-really-need jointer. A good compromise between capacity and cost is the 8″ size. I’ve used one for 15 years and have rarely needed more.

Jointers are also manufactured in two table styles: wedgebed and parallelogram. Wedgebed jointers have tables that slide up and down on sloped dovetailed ways in the casting. If the machine’s center casting looks somewhat like a triangle, the jointer is a wedgebed. Its infeed and outfeed tables are mounted and held in place along their inner edges only.

By contrast, the tables on a parallelogram jointer raise and lower on pivoting braces in the center casting. Each table is equipped with two braces along its length. Some experts suggest that parallelogram jointers are better able to maintain a co-planar table relationship, thanks to the added support these braces provide. But, wedgebed jointers that are used carefully and set up properly have served woodworkers well for as long as jointers have been made. Generally, they’re also more affordable. Regardless of design, if you buy your jointer from a reputable manufacturer, either style should serve you well.

Setting Up a Jointer

Aside from cranking down the infeed table to establish your desired depth of cut, there are only a couple of adjustments you might need to make to ready the machine for use. For one, it’s imperative that a jointer’s outfeed table is flush with the cutterhead’s TDC. To check, hold a straightedge against the outfeed table so it extends over the cutterhead. With the machine unplugged, rotate the cutterhead; the knives or inserts should just “kiss” the straightedge, touching but not lifting it. Adjust the outfeed table up or down slightly to dial it in as needed. Once TDC is established, you shouldn’t have to check it again unless you move the machine, bump the outfeed table significantly or drop something heavy on it.

For edge-jointing and squaring, you’ll also want to adjust the fence so it’s perpendicular to the tables. Do this by holding an accurate combination or engineer’s square against the fence and table, just past the cutterhead on the outfeed side. Adjust the fence so there’s no gap between the square’s blade and the fence face, and tighten the table setting.

The fence also needs to be moved laterally so it will expose enough of the cutterhead to join the stock width at hand. I leave my jointer’s fence cranked as far back as it will go most of the time; this way, I’m always ready to use the machine on wide material. Be sure to check for fence squareness again every time you move the fence in or out — any “play” in its mechanism can throw the fence out of squareness with the table again.

What about the “correct” depth of cut? To some degree, that’s a matter of personal preference. The deeper you set the infeed table, the more stock the machine will remove. On roughsawn lumber, a 1/16″ depth of cut will quickly skim off the oxidized, rough outer layer of the wood. It will rectify lumber defects such as cupping or bowing with fewer passes, too. But, deep cuts can also lead to more tearout on interlocked or figured grain. So, you may need to experiment with a cutting depth that best suits the particular stock you’re joining.

Generally, I leave my jointer set for about 1/32″-deep passes, regardless of the condition of the material or the species I’m surfacing. It requires me to make more passes to get stock flat, but the tearout is minuscule, provided I’m feeding the wood “with” the grain direction and not against it. Whatever you decide, however, never exceed a 1/8″ cutting depth for ordinary flattening and squaring operations — it increases the risk of kickback and torn-out grain.

Play It Smart: NEVER Do Either of These Things!

Jointers are the wrong tools for machining end grain. Severe tearout on the back corner is almost inevitable, and the cutterhead could grab and propel the wood backwards. Don’t do it.

Likewise, never put your hands at risk by joining stock thinner than 1/2″, narrower than 3″ or shorter than 12″.

Body Language

Using a jointer is a bit like learning a dance step, and it takes some practice. Whether you’re jointing faces or edges, you’ll stand beside the machine on the infeed side and feed stock into the cutterhead with it firmly held against both the infeed table and the fence. Your left hand guides the workpiece from above, while your right hand feeds it forward from behind.

Once the stock begins to pass through the cutterhead, it’s safe and appropriate to move your left hand to the outfeed table to continue guiding it along. That might mean taking a step or two forward, alongside the machine, which is why it’s important to orient yourself so you can move with the wood, if needed. This is particularly important when joining long or heavy lumber.

Above all, maintain your balance and sure-footedness. Feed the material across the machine in a fluid, continuous motion to help ensure that faces and edges will be milled flat and smooth.

Then, there’s the matter of safety — the cutterhead won’t know the difference between wood or your fingers. Be sure the machine’s casters are locked so it can’t accidentally move during use. Roll up long sleeves and use push sticks or push pads for face jointing instead of your hands. NEVER operate a jointer for flattening faces or edges without the guard in place and functioning correctly. A jointer is a fantastic shop asset. Use it wisely.

The post Tool Tutorial: Power Jointers appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

The post PROJECT: Horizontal Tilt-top Router Table appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.

1. It’s all about the blades. A British band saw patent was filed in 1809. But the technology to create durable band saw blades (the welds broke quickly) kept band saws from being a practical tool for the next many years. A patent by Anne Crepin, a Frenchwoman, solved the welding problem in 1846, and the way was made clear for band saws. The American band saw patent was filed in 1836 by Benjamin Barker of Ellsworth, Maine. (Apparently it had to wait for a suitable blade as well!)

2. Size matters. Woodworking band saw blades are generally made of carbon steel. The width of the blade is the key determinant as to how small a curve or diameter you can cut. A 3/4″-wide blade’s minimum cut diameter (about 5-1/2″) is much larger than a 1/4″ blade (approximately 5/8″). On the other hand, wide blades usually cut straighter lines than narrow blades, if they are sharp.

3. Those are some fine teeth you have. Tooth count varies on band saw blades. In general, narrow blades have more teeth per inch and cut smoothly but require a slower feed rate. Wide blades have fewer and larger teeth per inch. They cut more roughly but are stronger, to handle much thicker material. The larger gullets between their teeth allow more swarf to be removed with greater efficiency while producing less friction.

4. Two to tango. There are two main types of tooth configurations: hook tooth and skip tooth. The hook tooth has about a 10-degree rake angle, allowing more aggressive and faster cutting. Its trade-off: a rougher cut. Skip tooth blades will not cut as quickly but leave a much smoother surface on the wood, requiring less sanding on exposed edges.

5. Jack of many materials. While we primarily cut wood, band saw blades are available that cut many different materials. Plastics and non ferrous metals (brass, copper and aluminum) can also be cut with the proper blades on a standard band saw. Carbide tooth blades are a relatively new technology that provide high quality cuts and remain sharp for a long time.

The post Band Saw Blades: Five Fast Facts appeared first on Woodworking | Blog | Videos | Plans | How To.