jointing faces flat

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Location
Central (upstate) NY
It looks like Larry told the walnut that he delivered that us NYers were hoighty toighty folks and that the walnut should bow to me once I went to go use it. :rofl:

My boards are about 9" wide, and I'm using a 6" jointer, so I have the guard off and am using the old flip it around technique. The jointer is set to a very light pass - about half a mm (I can read that scale better than the English today). Given this light pass, is it normal for many, many passes to be needed? I am jointing so that the bow points upward - I'm not removing any material on the middle of the board yet.

The bow was slight. The walnut arrived face planed, so I cut down to approximate length, jointed an edge on each board and laid the pieces out to see if I was gonna be lucky. The boards agreed for about 2/3 the length, but then diverged to be maybe 2 - 3 mm apart from each other at the other ends.

I guess I'm just experiencing a moment of low confidence and want to make sure I'm not going to end up with a piece of veneer for a tabletop while I take a short break and drink some fluids.

Thanks!

Just remembered a question - other than hearing the jointer remove material across the whole board, how do I know my board face is flat?
 
you`re edge gluing boards to make a table right?
why are you even joining the faces?
glue 2 at a time together if they`re wonkey, use anything (long reach vice grips, cauls, the car) to force them into parallel and clamp them together.
then glue your glue-ups together...............only then flatten the face.
use a hand plane, a router suspended on a bridge, sanders.....your choice.
when one side is flat then parallel it, only then cut to final size.
 
Set the board on a flat surface, bowing up like a bridge. The distance between the surface your setting on and the underside of the bridge is about the amount that must be removed. If this is 1/8" then many .5mm passes will be required.

Cross cut your pieces to rough length prior to jointing as this can reduce the amount of bow presented to the jointer and save you some material. Once I am close to the final couple passes, I draw lines across the downside of the board with a pencil. This gives me a visual on my progress; when the lines are all gone, I'm done.
 
that stuff was already heavy,, planed roughly to 7/8" you should be able to glue up and then surface to your 3/4"your after unless it went way south it wasnt bowed when i gave it to you i am pretty sure or you wouldnt have gotten it. but all wood will move when stacked one way or another.
 
you`re edge gluing boards to make a table right?
why are you even joining the faces?
glue 2 at a time together if they`re wonkey, use anything (long reach vice grips, cauls, the car) to force them into parallel and clamp them together.
then glue your glue-ups together...............only then flatten the face.
use a hand plane, a router suspended on a bridge, sanders.....your choice.
when one side is flat then parallel it, only then cut to final size.

Because this is my first glue up and I'm learning by experience. I was planning to start with flat and parallel, be careful with the glue up (only two pieces total) and hopefully have a minimum distortion from flat and parallel after the glue dries. Thanks for the idea to clamp the ends flush - this should help with the being careful during glueup part.

I'm not sure how best for me to accomplish paralleling after the glue up if needed. My planer is only 13" and the tabletop will be 16" and one of the few tools I still long for is a thicknessing sander - not that I have room or cash for one anyways. I suppose if I'm badly out of parallel afterward the glueup I could either use the dado stack on the RAS or rig some sort of bridge for my EZ-Smart router.

Set the board on a flat surface, bowing up like a bridge. The distance between the surface your setting on and the underside of the bridge is about the amount that must be removed. If this is 1/8" then many .5mm passes will be required.

Cross cut your pieces to rough length prior to jointing as this can reduce the amount of bow presented to the jointer and save you some material. Once I am close to the final couple passes, I draw lines across the downside of the board with a pencil. This gives me a visual on my progress; when the lines are all gone, I'm done.

I did crosscut down to rough length first, but thank you for the reminder. As it was, I only needed to make 4 more full passes (so for me, 8 trips through the jointer) to hear wood removal across the whole length of the board. Maybe I'm more confident than I was thinking - I thought I should have been done, and I was really close to being done.

that stuff was already heavy,, planed roughly to 7/8" you should be able to glue up and then surface to your 3/4"your after unless it went way south it wasnt bowed when i gave it to you i am pretty sure or you wouldnt have gotten it. but all wood will move when stacked one way or another.

We've had some really crazy rapid change weather here (both temperature and humidity) since I received the wood - I'm sure that is what did it. If I was making a 28" long table, not 40" I'd've been all set.

Ok, I'm off to plane to same thickness for each piece now, since I think for my abilities it will be easier for me to do this now and make a slight clean up after gluing than not worrying about it at all until after glueing.

Regarding the glueup itself, should I try to orient the grain of the edges so that if I was gonna pass the whole piece through a planer it would act like one board as far as grain direction and planer tearout is concerned? (I hope I'm making sense with this one - not sure how else to say it.)

Again, thanks for putting up with beginner questions!
 
mark dont. take any off the face till after glue up....then find a person to sand it out for you or do it your sefl with a bridge system or just a ROS.. for a 40 inch piece you would be better to find another wood shop to sand it out for you the boards can be put to gether the best appearnce way..
 
Ok, it is glued up. I see what you all mean - I had a hard enough time keeping the ends lined up much less trying to keep it lined up face-face. I had to tell myself during clamping that this is a first try, it just has to eventually work - perfection is not required at this point.

A friend of mine right in town used to have a Performax 22-44 which would be my first choice, but he had to sell it to make ends meet when his hours were reduced during these difficult financial times.

I'm learning from this - and very glad I went with this "simple" two piece glue up for my first rather then the multiple piece idea using some cherry shorts I have laying around.

Here is the humble pic to prove that I've really been out butchering wood today! :rofl:

glueup.JPG

The final dimensions are going to be less than 40" long by 16" wide. Right now it is closer to 18" wide - I'm going to rip it to width for appearance after the glue is dried.
 
Good for you Mark. Those yellow clamps look very cute. What make are they. Then that Walnut how did you stack it when you got it from Larry.

Flat or standing or on a shelf?
 
Good for you Mark. Those yellow clamps look very cute. What make are they. Then that Walnut how did you stack it when you got it from Larry.

Flat or standing or on a shelf?

They are Stanley brand clamps. I picked them up at Big Lots for cheap.

I put the walnut stacked flat on my wood storage rack, which is an A-frame with iron pipe sticking out. The iron pipe is covered with foam pipe insulator. Larry brought so much over it wouldn't fit stickered so I had to just stack them on top of each other.

Mark, If you need to bring it with and we can run it thru the planer or sander and get it smooth and flat.:thumb:

Good to know! I'm gonna give it a go with my ROS first though, see if I can get things sorted out with what I have on hand here. But it's good to know I have an option before making veneer out of my glueup. :rofl:
 
Ok, it is glued up. I see what you all mean - I had a hard enough time keeping the ends lined up much less trying to keep it lined up face-face.
This is good practice when gluing up a panel, although I don't always do it. Make yourself some cauls. Take a 2x4 and cut it to whatever length you want. Joint the edges and apply packing tape to those edges. Then when you glue up, before you put the clamps on, clamp the cauls against the faces, one caul on top and one on the bottom. One clamp on each end of the two cauls pulling them together and flattening the panel.

Then clamp in the normal fashion. Once you have the clamps tight, you can remove the cauls, but most people leave them on until the glue sets (which is why you put the packing tape on the cauls - to keep them from getting glued to the panel).

Mike
 
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