Jointing square edge without Jointer fence?

[alex grams]

Advice on this? I have two 6/4 boards 7' long i need to joint and glue together. Are there any tricks on keeping the plane square to the face of the boards without a jointer fence?

[mike holden]

Basically, practice.
I also use a front grip where my thumb is down next to the knob and my fingers curl under the sole and make a kind of fence. Having a curved blade in the plane helps as well.

You could also lay the boards out the way you want them, then fold up the edges to be jointed and then joint them together, that way any error is cancelled out.

Mike

[Niels Cosman]

Ditto to what mike said and to add some detail.

-make sure the face(s) of the board are actually flat so you can use one or both as reference (cant tell you the number of time this has bit me in the butt)

-Check the edge with a square as you go, pass by pass

-using the fingers as a fence is a good idea, especially on narrow stock to reference the middle of the blade (when your blade is cambered) and you can "steer" the blade to remove more heavily on the high spots but 6/4 is not really narrow but still I find that position most comfortable to keep pressure down in front of the blade and square

-once the edge is square, check the length for straightness. I use the sole of the plane looking for light gaps. usually you will get some crowning, this can be removed with stop cuts starting in the middle of the board and working to the ends till you get no shavings, then taking one or two full length passes until you get complete shavings.

-some people intentionally leave concavity in the boards to create a "spring joint" ensuring that the ends are tight after glue up. this has never sat well with me. anything that adds tension into a joint seems like bad news.

193055

I love to match plane boards by clamping two adjoining edges and planing them together however you still need to ensure straightness with stop cuts or visual inspection. Also a straighter blade is more advisable in this configuration. Here's a picture of two match planed book-matched oak panels I made last week for a table top. This is BEFORE glue and the joint is air-tight. working with thicker boards is more challenging, but really effective!

-Finally i check the joint on a known flat surface- I generally use my table saw top (this is my final checking method for face flatness too)

Hope this helps- GOOD LUCK!

cheers,
Niels

[Jamie Buxton]

You don't have to keep the edges at precisely ninety degrees to the faces. That's way way difficult. There's an easier approach.

Put the two boards together the way they'll be after you glue them. Now pick them up and fold them together like the pages of a book. The two edges you need to joint will be on one side of the folded-together boards. Now clamp these boards together and joint them at the same time. When you unfold the two boards, they'll form a flat panel, even if the edges are not ninety degrees. One edge will be a little less than ninety, and the other edge will be a little more than ninety -- by exactly the same amount. They'll add up to 180 degrees, which is what you want.

[Johnny Kleso]

If you have a long workbench you can place the boards on a 1/4" spacers and and use clamps or battens to hold the boards in place and lay the plane on its side and shoot the boards like the bench is a giant shooting board for the last few cuts..

Or use a square to check boards and have a blade with a light camber and planing left or right of center of the camber takes more or less off one side or the other..

[Sean Hughto]

Do you have a decent table saw? That's the easiest and most sure fire.

You can make your own fence with wood and small clamps.


You can plane and check the boards against each other lots of times. Rubbing them together with some pencil scribbles can show high spots.

[alex grams]

The thumb/finger trick may be easier on a shorter (1-2' board) but would be dang tough on a 6' board.

Jamie,
The two boards are 6/4, so 3" overall, and wider than my plane. I thought about that approach if i had two boards that were 3/4 each and were narrower than my plane, but not sure how it would work with them being wider than the plane when doubled up.

Johnny,
I thought about that. That may be what I do. That, or I may just clamp some boards on each side of the plane and make a red-neck jointer fence.

Sean,
The boards are natural edge on the opposite side I am jointing, so can't really slide them against a fence.

[Bob Jones]

Match plane and practice. It is not that bad if you go with the grain, but terrible if you go against it. Bob Ros. covered it really well on his video blog.

[Sean Hughto]

Sean,
The boards are natural edge on the opposite side I am jointing, so can't really slide them against a fence.

Sure you can. You simple need to mount them to a carrier board that does have a straight edge. 3/4 ply or particle board would work fine.

[Pam Niedermayer]

My solution was to get a wooden jointer or two (ECE 22" and C&W 30") and match plane the two boards at the same time. The wooden jointer is tall, which gives you more visual information as you plane, enough to hold it fairly square to the board.

Pam

[Norman Hitt]

Sure you can. You simple need to mount them to a carrier board that does have a straight edge. 3/4 ply or particle board would work fine.

+ 1 on this method. I have used this method for many years. I cut the length a little long and then use one screw at each end to fasten it to an 8" wide strip of MDF that is butted against the fence. Fast, simple and straight.

[alex grams]

Norman/Sean,
I may have to try that method. The other option I was looking at is the same method I use on cutting straight edges for long veneer joints, a straight edge with a router.

[glenn bradley]

I do what Mike Holden does but, I would prefer to build a quick carrier out of scrap and run it on the tablesaw.

[Eddie Darby]

Advice on this? I have two 6/4 boards 7' long i need to joint and glue together. Are there any tricks on keeping the plane square to the face of the boards without a jointer fence?

Why would you not use a fence?

http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/page.aspx?p=41716&cat=1,41182

Just get the edge square, and then remove the fence and plane free hand just making sure that you take an even shaving from the edge, so you remain square.

David Charlesworth uses a cambered blade to keep his edges square, buy running the cambered blade over the high spots.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?56950-hand-jointing

[Terry Beadle]

It may sound simple. Rely on your eye and a pencil. Look down the edge and look for areas that are not square. Mark them with a pencil. With such a long board, it would help to have a person mark the areas that need work while you judge the flatness and squareness of the edge. Concentrate on one area at a time and don't think you can take a single pass and correct all the areas that may need work.

Once you get both boards close, do trial fits of the two mating surfaces. Hold one end still and move the mating surfaces in a pivoting action. Mark with a pencil those pivot points. Try to leave a concavity enough so that there are no mid-board pivot points. The mating surfaces should just rub but not pivot.

You don't need an extremely long jointer plane. A number 7 or 8 is great. A number 6 is also good and you can even work with a 5 or 5 1/2. The longer planes make the area to work easier and longer but the shorter planes will still do the job if you pay attention to the over fit of work areas to the total mating surface flatness and squareness.

If your work table is flat, then you can use it as a shooting board for the areas you need to work by slightly elevating the work piece and running your plane along the work piece piecemeal to each work area.

By working the work areas instead of the whole board, but making frequent progress checks to the flatness and squareness of the whole board, you will get great results. The human eye can be trained to know square and flatness is even easier.

Good luck and enjoy the process.

[Frank Drew]

Put the two boards together the way they'll be after you glue them. Now pick them up and fold them together like the pages of a book. The two edges you need to joint will be on one side of the folded-together boards. Now clamp these boards together and joint them at the same time. When you unfold the two boards, they'll form a flat panel, even if the edges are not ninety degrees. One edge will be a little less than ninety, and the other edge will be a little more than ninety -- by exactly the same amount. They'll add up to 180 degrees, which is what you want.

This method works quite well, but for doubled-up 6/4 stock Alex will need quite a wide-bladed plane. [Oops, just saw that Alex already addressed this point.]


You can make your own fence with wood and small clamps. Exactly, an accurate 90º fence for a hand plane is very easy to make out of any old scrap, and even easier to use.

(But if table saws are allowed here, then I'd use a jointer instead, rather than fiddling around with a table saw and carrier.)

[Bobby O'Neal]

Why the cambered blade? Is it easier to leave the edge slightly concave so the edges mate well?

[Kevin Grady]

+ 1 on this method. I have used this method for many years. I cut the length a little long and then use one screw at each end to fasten it to an 8" wide strip of MDF that is butted against the fence. Fast, simple and straight.


+2 I used the same method to joint the edge of a 12/4 7' slab of cherry. Worked like a champ.

[Zach Dillinger]

Basically, practice.
I also use a front grip where my thumb is down next to the knob and my fingers curl under the sole and make a kind of fence. Having a curved blade in the plane helps as well.

You could also lay the boards out the way you want them, then fold up the edges to be jointed and then joint them together, that way any error is cancelled out.

Mike

Mike has it right on. Practice your grip, trust your plane, and think of England. You'll get through it.

[Sean Richards]

Basically, practice. I also use a front grip where my thumb is down next to the knob and my fingers curl under the sole and make a kind of fence.

Mike has it right on. Practice your grip, trust your plane, and think of England. You'll get through it.

All of the above. Grip is important - so what Mike says. Then mark a line and get jointing - use your eye, check with a square, repeat until close enough ...

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Why the cambered blade? Is it easier to leave the edge slightly concave so the edges mate well?

That can be the case, but I like an edge joint to be perfectly straight across if I can - but the camber helps you get the edge square without worrying too much about tilting the plane (which can be difficult to do consistently) or resetting the lateral adjuster. If it's high on the left edge, you simply move the plane over so the center (of the plane, and hence the center of the cambered blade) is over the high spot. This removes a little more material from there, and helps bring that edge down. Once you get it closer to even, you can start moving the blade more to the center. I like a little more camber than my smoother, but less than my jack for roughing. The finished surface should end with a slightly concave middle this way. I don't like any more concave than I can remove with one or two passes. I usually make a final pass with a straight blade to get it perfect. It's a bit of a balancing act between the camber of the blade - enough you can even things out well, but not so much it makes it hard to straighten out. If the stock is thing enough, your final passes, with the blade perfectly centered, can leave a straight-across enough edge you don't need to remove and hollow, but it depends on the size of the stock and the shape of the blade.

Another thing to watch out for is the initial condition of the stock - it's tempting at times to worry about getting it straight along it's length, and then finding you made it out of square afterwards. Find out how it's started, and keep an eye on it as you get things straightened out - if you see the edge going out of square during the process, you can adjust your technique (or the lateral setting of the iron) and keep it from getting too far out.

But like others said, nothing is going to beat practice here.