What's all this I hear about a Table Saw replacing a Jointer?

[Dan Barr]

I'm not cabinet maker, but...

i used to rip straight lines (instead of edge jointing)on most of my stock with the tablesaw. then i would run my smoother over it a few passes to remove any undulations from the tableswa blade. (yes, they will be there if yo look closely)

Even when i edge joint on the jointer, i would still run my smoother over the edge a few times to remove the tiny scalloping left behind by the jointer.

so, my answer is that you can do wither or both and finish with a smoother.

my two cents.

dan

[Sean Hughto]

I dunno how long you've been at this, Alex, but for what it may be worth, in my expereince, there are few only, best, or right ways in woodworking. There are many ways to each end. Different things are important to different woodworkers; for example, a pro may have a need for speed, a hobbiest may love certain processes more than others, some may have aversions to dust, or to machines that can mutilate you in a split second. The list goes on and on. In any event, the joint is what matters in this context. Both a table saw and a jointer will leave faint marks on the edge of the boards from the rotating blade. In most species, the clamping pressure and compression of the wood makes these a non-issue. Sometimes, a swipe of a smooth plane might be necessary with either power tool to get an invisible glue line result. Neither tool has a significant advantage as far as the surface they leave or in making a flat edge square to the face of the board. The feed rate for both is similar, but with a jointer, you might have to make multiple passes. Also, unlike a jointer, with a table saw, the cut of the second side is perfectly parallel to the first.

As far as your comment about needing a jointed edge to begin with, this is an overstatement. Even S2S boards tend to have at least one edge that is more than straight enough to reference the fence for making the first cut. If the board has a waney edge, I'm guessing you're not shoving is over the jointer from the get go to eliminate all that wane, are you? Seems like that would take a lot of passes. A first cut with bandsaw or table saw cut would be the more common first step, right?

Any sled that might be necessary (never needed one for anything other than waney stock, personally) is just a piece of plywood or mdf, it ain't no jig or anything fancy. And yes, it would be completely safe to run through the table saw.

Anyway, each to their own.

[Josiah Bartlett]

For edge jointing where a table saw blade leaves too rough a surface, a shaper with a straight cutter or a router table with a good spiral bit leaves a very nice surface. Most shapers have a split fence that makes it easy- it works just like a jointer would if you had mounted it with the base on the wall and stood on the floor to use it.

Even my small shaper can face joint a 2" edge with no problem at all. It also allows you to face joint a piece that isn't intended to be parallel on the opposite edge, like a round table drop leaf or a turning blank.

[Chip Lindley]

Gormet cooking is to jointing rough lumber, as S3S is to....McDonalds?!?! And, it seems woodworking is a lot like the Real Estate business. Location Location Location. I am blessed to be in the Ozarks where rough-sawn hardwood is very common and plentiful. But, those who do cabinetry in, say, the arid Southwest, have to import 100% of their stock unless they used kiln-dried cactus, or petite mesquite!

One of my greatest enjoyments is running rough-sawn weathered boards across the jointer to reveal their unique grain! Since my self-indulgent woodworking is on a very small scale compared to one who is competing commercially and must make every hour count to turn a profit, I am blessed to be able to take my time and use jointer and planer as they were intended. I also operate "On The Cheap" by buying rough stuff for a song at auctions or recycling barn wood or shipping dunnage. Were I situated in downtown Chicago, no doubt my priorities and operations would change drastically!

Ripping stock straight for gluing can and is done with the right machinery AND the right stock. Preparing stock can either be part of the cost of materials borne by the customer, OR it can be part of the pleasure of woodworking. I guess it all depends--if you are feeding a family, OR feeding a need to work with wood!

One question for all the users of S3S lumber...What do you do with all the *culls*? Feed the boiler? Or, spend valuable time figuring out where they will fit into a project? OR bundle them up and sell them to *just woodworkers*?

My limited experience with pre-surfaced stock taught me that there was much left to do, to achieve *flat/straight*! Still there was a *time* factor added to increased cost. I am happy others have experienced *better*!

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

I did it for years.
This was before the days of nice carbide blades.
I sharpened my own blades with a file and set the teeth with the but of a hammer.
And it worked. I have some of the 2" and 1.5" thick maple butcher block furniture I made that way. I have the first 12 string guitar that I made and the only joints that have failed were the ones that got soaked in a flood.

Fact is, I didn't know any better at the time. And it worked just fine.

[robert micley]

i am a hobbyist. i have good friends who are contractors. it seems that many of the folks on this woodworking board are into perfect tuning and alignment of all their tools. the contractors i know are just not into this. they do not check their table saw fences for dead parallel with dial gauges. they just seem to make things. now they may not make furniture for shows- but they are making quality cabinets and custom built rails, staircases and built ins. i think from my own experience and watching them that you do not need equipment dead on perfect. you do not need your table saw top dead flat- you do not need your table saw fence dead parallel or within.003. you do not need machinists squares, straight edges, or angle gauges to check your cuts. what you need is experience and intelligence. getting to the topic of the jointer. i love it and need it for certain applications. for narrow stock - i like to get one reference edge nice and flat. this is so easy on the jointer. whether for drawers or face frames, i run the boards on edge to get the reference edge- cut to width on the table saw. no more jointing on these pieces. even if i have to glue some pieces together on edge for the door panels or sides the table saw cut seems good enough. i do use the jointer a lot for face jointing- especially for drawer sides, door rail and stile and picture frames or poster frames. you really need flat pieces for these because you will not have flat doors or frames. wide and long pieces of wood i do not use my jointer because it is too hard for me- i get a nice edge using my festool guide saw. i am really not good at jointing a flat face or edge face of a long wide piece of wood---- these pieces i bring to my friend. once i brought my square with me to check out cabinets in cabinet stores. they are far from perfect- face frames, drawers, - everything is not square. my cabinets for my house and workshop are pretty good but not perfect as measured with a square. i cannot get exact same cuts in 4 pieces of plywood that are wide because they would have to be dead dead flat- place 2 pieces on top of each other and they can be off if there is the slightest bow or cup. that being said- a jointer is my favorite tool because it is like opening a present to see what your rough lumber looks like . other times it is just a pain when you are doing many pieces for drawers or frames and it takes hours and you wish the wood was just flat and edged already.

[Peter Quinn]

Wow, its fun to watch the fist fights break out on this one. I feel like I'm at a family wedding! So maybe the mods should add this topic to the short list of topics that cannot be touched? No politics, no religion, and never discuss edge joining......

Seriously, I hesitate to call myself a pro, but I have been working wood for a living for several years now, and most of the guys at work have more than two decades each under their belts. We make fine custom cabinets in the $600/LF and up range and millwork of all sorts. I'd guess if you are banging out 3/4" doors and frames with overlays using euro hinges, you can skip the jointer and run with the S4S, no problems. But if you are telling me you can make 1 1/8" thick full inset doors with tight reveals hanging on brass butt hinges from lumber yard milled stock, I'm calling BS. When your inset is full and your stops are integral hard wood not rubber baby buggie bumpers, and your panels are typically two board matched glue ups on even the widest of doors, your doors better not have any twist AT ALL, and your jointer better have sharp knives. So that is where I stand on that if an opinion poll breaks out. Some work doesn't need a jointer, some most certainly does, you be the judge of your own work.

We had a guy in the shop for a little while that had Umpty nine years professional cabinet making experience and had his own shop for decades. He never used a jointer before, but nobody knew that. His portfolio looked pretty good. His first job was making 15 large M&T brackets from 12/4 mahogany (SA), basically a 3X4X5 triangle, to ride under a soffit of a grand entry way. And how do you suppose Mr. I DONT NEED A JOINTER made out when he started trying to mill the angled mortises and tennons for the job? Turns out it was also his last assignment....what a mess he left.

As for glue line ripping, last month I made what seemed like several miles of 5/4 Ash panels, 16"X16', mostly two board glue ups, using stock straight off the straight line saw. Not a single glue failure and every glue line was either invisible or unable to be seen by the naked eye of several trained professionals. We glued them up then planed them as they were for wall panels which don't have to be flat. First time I had done anything that got glued without getting joined first, but 'm convinced. As long as you have a tight fitting dry fit I find the surface off the saw works fine. I can't imagine an electric guitar body needs to be perfectly flat so I'd guess it would work fine without a jointer? Unless you have jigs for the neck joint or edging that rely on some serious flatness?

I'd probably be inclined to work out the kinks in your system with some cheap poplar or basswood before committing good stock to the process, but it seems easy enough to make a straight line jig for one edge given the short length of your blanks. I guess you'll need a decent saw to joint 8/4 hardwoods like maple or ash given the blade will be almost full up with a sled under the stock for that first pass. One thing we did do for glue line ripping was to clean up the second edge, then bump the fence in a light 1/16" and take one more "kiss" so there was no tension on the waste side of the blade to muck things up, and this seemed to yield a better surface quality.

[Sean Hughto]

Peter, for the hobbiest at least, there is a path between working straight from S4S lumber yard stuff and using a jointer. On that path are handplanes, lunchbox planers, table saws, etc., which allow one to work to any tolerance one may choose even without an power jointer. I'm not saying my work is particularly fine, but even a hack like myself can make flat inset doors with brass butt hinges and respectable reveals without a jointer being used, it prolly does at least constitute proof of the concept. Here's some recent doors and drawers before and after they were hung.

[Peter Quinn]

[QUOTE=Sean Hughto;1246728]Peter, for the hobbiest at least, there is a path between working straight from S4S lumber yard stuff and using a jointer. On that path are handplanes, lunchbox planers, table saws, etc., which allow one to work to any tolerance one may choose even without an power jointer. I'm not saying my work is particularly fine, but even a hack like myself can make flat inset doors with brass butt hinges and respectable reveals without a jointer being used, it prolly does at least constitute proof of the concept. Here's some recent doors and drawers before and after they were hung.

Sean, your doors are beautiful. As soon as you mention hand planes, and lunch box planers, I'm hearing suggestions that you flatten your stock as needed. I didn't mean to suggest that a large jointer is the only way to make things flat, just the quickest way I can think of. Are you suggesting that you make doors with stock that has not been in some way flattened beyond the surfacing done by the mill? I have not had good success with that. I can usually pick some material that would be suitable as is after surfacing, but not usually enough to do a large scale job in any given pile.

I have made a few doors that were not so flat and got them hung and fitted so they worked, but I find it much easier to hang a door that is flat, and I find it much easier to make a flat door with flat stock. How the stock gets flat is a much varied path. I can say there is little room for extensive hand work in the shop where I work in terms of time alloted, but I am working towards using them increasingly in my home shop.

I will say that I have hung some fairly twisted stuff using cup hinges and set them so they looked fine. Much more forgiving IME.

[robert micley]

the cabinet looks great but the sliding dovetail on one side only looks out of place and too busy. but looks well done.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

the cabinet looks great but the sliding dovetail on one side only looks out of place and too busy.

I thought it was a nice subtle accent that comes out after the first look.

[Tony Bilello]

I think some of you are taking the literal word and then stopping there as if it is the end of the story. Most of us that buy S3S are buying it slightly over thicknessed. Then when panels and tops are glued up, they are taken down to final thickness. This will remove any slight misalignment during clamping, any slightly dinged edges that are not 100% crisp and otherwise cleaned up to perfection. This usually involves a hand plane as well as a power planer and a wide belt sander. The key is to still start with flat boards whether you do it yourself or have the lumber yard do it. You will not get this flatnes or wood stability from Menards, Home Depot, Lowes or most lumber yards in general and therefore have no choice but to do it yourself. If you are fortunate enough to be in reasonable driving distance (an hour or two) or along a delivery route of a high quality specialty lumber company life gets easier. Most of their boards are in very good condition even in the rough. These are not the kind of places that the average cabinet shop or builder frequents. These are not the kinds of places that you count savings in pennies. However, once you get to know the managers, you can get great deals. These are usually on their culls that they cut into smaller pieces, where you can make an offer on a pallet load. Even their culls are far superior to what most lumber yards carry.
Anyway, the point being that you must start your project with flat stock whether you do it or the yard does it. Once your stock is flat, a joiner is not needed to give a good edgeglued joint. A table saw can do that.
BTW , beautiful piece Sean. Nice work and the dovetailed piece breaks any monotony, not that there was any on this particular piece.

What happened to this forum where people feel free to negatively critique anothers work especially when not asked to and when the criticism has nothing to do with a joiner as the original post was asking? I usually try to be careful with my words and phrases so as not to insult anothers ability. Sometimes though when I get pissed, I lose all of my sensitivity and it usually is finely targeted. I will try to curb myself further as I wish others would also. having said that, lets move on to woodworking as gentleman.

[Sean Hughto]

Yes, Peter, I flatten and thickness the stock, I just don't like to use a jointer to do it. My only point was that a jointer is not absolutely essential. I kind of look at it like a huge cabinet shop drum sander, it may be fast and efficient, but there are other ways to get there that work too, and in the end, no one using the door is likely to appreciate which tool produced the flat surface.

[Sean Hughto]

Robert, FWIW, there is a sliding dovetail on each corner of the dividers surrounding the pinwheel drawer, but the grain chotoycance (or whatever the right word is) just makes that one stand out in this particular picture. That said, I took some design risks, and am still trying to decide what worked and what didn't. Live and learn. Thanks for the feedback.

[harry strasil]

Can someone point me in the right direction for a place to buy after market pulleys. I have a Delta Contractor TS and just put on one of those belts that snap together. I would like to swap out to balanced pulleys for making those edge joint cuts.

Johnnyy, its not the pulleys that cause the trouble, they are too small to have any effect on balance, what is the problem is a standard solid V belt gets a memory from setting around a pulley, the sectional belts will slip under a good stress, to get rid of vibration go to an auto supply or V belt place and get the notched back V belt, it will not develop a memory will perfome well even under great load, and is a lot cheaper than those sectional things.

3rd picture from the top
http://www.mainsupplies.com/index.ph...index&cPath=28