Jointing, on a 45

[Dave Mills]

Up until now, I've just used my 8" Powermatic 60HH with the fence square to the bed. Tonight I needed to cut a 45 degree chamfer along the edges of a long board and thought I'd try it on the jointer. I couldn't get it to work though. The chamfer gets increasingly smaller as you push the board through, so on a 5ft board I'd say it went from a 1/2" chamfer down to a 3/8" chamfer. This was on 4 separate test cuts, so I gave up and did it on the table saw.

The jointer otherwise works perfectly fine for square cuts, so I'm wondering if I missed some technique other than "tilt the fence to 45 degrees and run your board through".

[Andrew Hughes]

My guess is you started a flat area on the beginning of the board. I say this because sometimes when I face boards with a twist and nasty warp the it’s the first few passes that determine my success. If I get flat area started in the middle point works out nice.
Since I hardly ever tilt my jointer fence it’s just a guess. But I do a lot weird shaped pieces

[Andrew Seemann]

It sounds like the board might be riding up the fence as you go through the cut. Normally you push into the table with a fair amount of pressure, but I don't think would be easy to keep a board registered/indexed against the bed such a small surface as a 1/2" chamfer while having the guard push against the board, which also would likely make the board want to ride up the fence.

I says this as guess, because I never use the jointer for anything but face jointing and 90 degree edge jointing. I would do a chamfer like that with a router or maybe table saw rather than a jointer. It seems a lot easier and safer.

[Mel Fulks]

Yeah. It's just more difficult to do a champher than a 90 degree cut. A little lateral movement doing an ordinary 90
doesnt botch the squareness. The lateral moveing is more likely with concave length facing the fence. Put the convex
side to the fence and hold the piece to fence and out feed table. The "Pusher Man" hand should be pushing forward only.
Not down. Outfeed hand has the easy job, don't let him botch it !

[Dave Mills]

Thanks for the input, folks. With the fence on an angle like that, it certainly is touchy trying to register the board to both the fence and the bed of the jointer. I must have just lost that somewhere along the line. Likely at the start, as AJ says, which on the jointer seems to be the beginning of all problems.

[John C Bush]

I have used a feather board to hold the stock tight to the bottom of the fence to keep it from slipping down on the outfeed table and have had success 45-ing a small--18"x24"x1 3/4"--NE slab on the jointer with a friend controlling the outfeed side--human feather board. TS is easier. Good luck.

[glenn bradley]

As others have touched on, the face you are using as a reference against the fence has to be flat and true. I do angles on the jointer with good result but, I face and edge joint first. As with hand planing, you can influence the cut. Mel describes it well; let the tool do the work, you just feed it the material in a controlled manner.

[Alex Zeller]

Which way did you tilt your fence? I had to make some triangles to glue together to make a 4" post but didn't want to look for (or pay a premium for) 20/4 kiln dried wood. My neighbor gave me some he made for a project that didn't happen so I didn't have to do it myself. But I did think about it. It seems like setting the fence so it's 135 degrees to the table there's more room to hold the board but you'll need to hold the board tight to the fence and to the outfeed table. If you set the fence so it's only 45 degrees your then pushing the board into an acute angle making it much easier to get consistent results. But there's less room so if the board is small there probably isn't enough to do it safely.

[Dave Mills]

Which way did you tilt your fence?

Hi Alex, the fence was tilted back to 135 degrees, so of course making that sort of a slippery ramp for the board. The board was completely square, and I did my best to watch it's seating on the fence, but as you and everyone stated, it's a bit tough to guarantee it's in the right position, with only the a very small chamfer being the part touching the bed. I'm not sure what situation would make me think of using the jointer over the table saw in the future for this operation.

[Alex Zeller]

Hi Alex, the fence was tilted back to 135 degrees, so of course making that sort of a slippery ramp for the board. The board was completely square, and I did my best to watch it's seating on the fence, but as you and everyone stated, it's a bit tough to guarantee it's in the right position, with only the a very small chamfer being the part touching the bed. I'm not sure what situation would make me think of using the jointer over the table saw in the future for this operation.

In my case a 10" tablesaw didn't have the ability to make the cuts I needed. For what you were trying to do a TS would work just fine. However trying new things is a great way to find out your limits. Some day may come when you want to make a 45 cut that can't be done by any of the current ways you have so far.

[Mike Wilkins]

Never tried to do a 45 on a board on my J/P machine. Seems like a difficult thing to do as you are attempting to keep the board on the tables and fence at the same time. I didn't feel comfortable at all.
A better solution would be to get a large diameter 45deg router bit, and using feather boards, do the angle on your router table.
Just my opinion only.

[Mike Henderson]

You mention a chamfer in your first post. I'd sure do that with a router bit rather than try to do it on the jointer. Easiest way would probably be on the router table but you could even do it hand held, as long as you have a bearing on the bottom of the 45 router bit. Have the bit exposed just enough to get the size of the chamfer you want.

Mike

[Stewart Lang]

An important point to remember is a jointer naturally tends make a tapering cut. It's why if you joint the edge of a board 100 times, chances are it'll probably end up narrower on one end than the other. So using it to make a 45 edge would result in exactly what you mentioned. You'd have to bevel the entire width to cancel the effect.

[Mike Wilkins]

An addition to my tip on using a 45deg router bit.
Make the initial cut at 45 on the table saw, a little oversize. Then use the 45deg router bit to get a clean miter. Less stress on the router.

[Dave Mills]

Thanks for the ideas, guys. I probably wasn't clear; I used the jointer for this because I'd never done it before and wanted to see how well it would work. I'm well aware of other ways to accomplish this chamfer using other tools.