Steps for Making Butt Edge Joints - Advice Sought

[Thomas Kila]

I have some rough 4/4 poplar boards about 8" wide and wish to joint them to make a shelf. I'm shooting for a final dimension of about 12" wide and 3/4" thick. Should I make sure that each board is four-square prior to jointing the two boards? Or could I get away with flattening and squaring just one face and one edge? (Since I'm quite certain I will have to flatten and square the jointed boards again anyway, I figure this might alleviate some extra work.) What do you all think? How do you do it? Please include the steps you take in the order you do them.
Mahalo!

[Jim Koepke]

Doing it the way you are suggesting requires you to make sure the grain is oriented the same on the boards being joined.

You would also have to make sure you kept the faces and the glue edges oriented correctly.

My suggestion would be to do your squaring before the gluing and then just take care of the smoothing afterward.

If you are not going to use dowels or splines to align, you will likely have to do a little planing along the glue line anyway due to misalignment. Even with dowels or splines there is bound to be places where a little smoothing is needed.

jtk

[Dan Andrews]

I would plane one surface flat on one side of each board. Then joint one edge square to that surface (the one to be glued). Then plane the other side of the board flat and parlell to the first side. Otherwise I think it would be difficult to keep the top, or first side alighned flat with cauls when glueing up. then I would plane both sides to final thickness as you clean up any glue or misalighned surfaces. Finally, I would then plane the outer edges of the glued up shelf to width. This final step will also remove any dents in the edges left by clamps. As said by others, make sure the boards grains are kept the same so you can do the final surface planing of the whole shelf from one direction per side.

I will admit that I have done most of my planing of larger stock with power thickness planer and jointer, but I believe that hand planing will work best by this method also.

[Russell Sansom]

Here's what I'd do. For each board:
Joint one face.
Joint one edge.
Rip to near final width.
Joint the 2nd edge. No reason not to do it right now. It's easy to avoid damaging the edges during glue-up
Edge glue the two boards. I always use pins, dowels, or splines. Otherwise it's difficult to keep the edges from slipping against each other in a predictable manner. If you have a few inches of extra length you might pin them in the waste. Long boards want a very small hollow for 1) positive clamping and 2) compensation for the ends shrinking faster than the middle over time.
Level the good face so the two halves are again in the same plane
Finally, finish the back side to be parallel to the good face.