Sometimes I Don't Think Too Good

[Dennis McDonaugh]

I replaced the door to my garage apartment this week and ran into a problem I'd never seen before. The door jamb was about 1/4" too narrow for the wall of the garage. In other words, when the door trim was flush with the outside wall, the jamb was 1/4" short of reaching the inside wall. The original contractor got around that filling the 1/4" gap on the inside with caulk. I didn't want to mickey mouse the trim again so I decided to line the jamb up flush with the inside and mill some new trim for the outside with a 1/4" rabbet in it to compensate for the misalignment. The problem was the rabbet needed to be almost the width of the 1X4 trim piece. I messed around with a router and after about 45 minutes got one piece milled, but it was tricky because on the last pass the router was riding on less than 1/2" of wood. I was standing there thinking there has to be a better way when I spied the jointer. You know, the one with the RABBETING ledge! Worked like a champ and the last two pieces were finished in about 10 minutes. I just wish I could think of these things before starting a project.

[Craig Zettle]

The thing that always bugged me about using the jointer as a rabbeting tool was supporting the stock as I ran it through. Small lengths, ok, but 6+ ft. scared me. Maybe its my cheap jointer, but I only have a little ledge there.

[Jeff Sudmeier]

Dennis,

Doesn't it amaze you! I can't count the number of times where I got done with something hard and imediately thought of a MUCH easier way!

[Michael Perata]

Jeff

That means you are learning...do the same task again the same way means you are forgetting. ;)

[Dennis McDonaugh]

The thing that always bugged me about using the jointer as a rabbeting tool was supporting the stock as I ran it through. Small lengths, ok, but 6+ ft. scared me. Maybe its my cheap jointer, but I only have a little ledge there.

Criag, the ledge on my jonter is about a foot long, but I was making a really wide rabbet. Three and a half inches of the 4 inch wide board were resting on the jointer tables.

[Brad Schmid]

I recently had a similar scenario making some transition molding between tile and laminate and carpet floors. I ended up using a dado on the table saw and working toward edge, left about 1/16-1/8" at the very edge for support during cut, then knocked that off quick with a hand plane. Worked good, and was real quick.

Brad

[Jim Becker]

Do the rebate while the molding is still part of a wider board...