Welcome to episode six of the wood whisperer video podcast. I am your host Mark Spragnolo, and I am very excited. Why am I excited you ask? Today festtool dust extraction system is being delivered. You know got it bad when you get excited over vacuum clearer. Anyway, I am also excited today because we are finally going to do some woodworking. [Applause] Thank you.
Now there is no better place to start than at the beginning. And most woodworkers know that you will not get very far without properly milled lumber. A properly milled board will have it face milled flat and parallel to its opposing face, and each edge is going to be straight, it is also going to be 90° to the adjacent face and parallel to the opposite edge. So, why do we need square and flat lumber? Fine furniture start with joinery and you cannot produce fine joinery without properly milled boards. You see, if we start with even slightly bold worked or crooked boards, all of our reference points will be thrown of and all of our resulting joinery would suck more that my 5 horsepower cyclone.
With properly milled lumber, your cuts will be more accurate, your joints will be stronger and your stress level will go way down which all translates to better quality furniture and more fun in the shop. In every project I do starts right here at the jointer. It is the first step in a four part process that I use to mill at my boards. So before we get started, let us go over a few details.
Before jointing, I would like to check to make sure to make sure that the fence is exactly 90° to the bed, I usually check several locations along the in feed and out feed tables. Next, I like to apply a coat of wax to the jointer’s bed and fence, this will reduce friction and make the jointing process much easier. Be sure to use a silicon free wax though because silicon has been known to cause finishing problems down the line. Next, I adjust the depth of cuts to no more that a 1/16 of an inch. And lastly, I check for loose fitting clothes.
I would like to just take a few moments to talk about safety. I will always try to provide the best example possible when it comes to safe operating procedure. I will even mention safety tips wherever I think of them. But nothing substitutes for commonsense. No matter how safe I am, ultimately, it is your decisions in your shop that will determine how safe you are. To sum it up, read all your manuals, do not do anything stupid, and above all, use your commonsense. Respect these tools, look at what they can do to wood, and imagine what they can do to flesh and bone.
Now, I would like to start by jointing one of this faces first. Now, we can not just randomly select the siding to go for it.. We need to actually look at the properties of the board and determine what the smartest way to approach it is. Now, as I set it down here, I am looking for a cup and I do see there is a slight rocking motion here, I have drawn on here with marker to show you the orientation of the cup. The safest way to cut this and actually joint this will be to joint in the bottom. Put it so that it will look like a frown because we have two points for the wood to rest on as opposed to one point like this where it can rock and pivot which is not a good idea.
The second thing I want to look for is if there is bow on the board. This one is pretty straight, it is not really going to be a problem for us but if there were a bow, you will find two schools of thoughts, some people swear by running as a frown and some people will swear by running it as a smiley face. Do a little research, find out what works for you, both of them will get you there and you just need to know at different lengths how each one is going to behave and make the right decision for yourself. The third thing is grain direction. I have gone ahead and actually drawn the orientation of the grain to show sort of exaggerate what I can not show with the camera that far away. Essentially you have to know that the blades in the jointer are spinning clockwise. Okay, so as we run this across there we want to make the blades are going with the grain. So when it knocks these little pieces of wood out, we are not going to get chipped out. If we run it through this way, you could see they will actually break off and create a much rougher cut so always run a cut with the grain.
So now that we know how to select the right face and the right direction, let us get it on.
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