rough wood

[cracker]

OK! I got a pretty piece of 8/4 purple heart yesterday. I have put one edge on my jointer and jointed it flat. Now I have a choice of running it through my planer or jointing the face of one side. The board is just over 6" wide. I really don't like my planer because of snipe on the ends, however I don't want to mess up this wood. This is the first time I've tried this, any suggestions?
Thanks
Everette

[Glen]

Cracker,

Just recently did a job with paduk, much the same proerties as purpleheart. I painstakenly set up in feed and outfeed tables and here's a simply snipe preventer. Make a sled with some flat sheet material but fasten sides to it so as to cradle your stock. Key is to make this cradle longer than your stock so when the stock clears the planer the cradle is still comming through and the cradle takes the snipe from the roller run off instead of the stock. Keep your stock from travelling with a couple sticks tacked to the sled at each end.

Glen

[Glen]

Cracker,

Left out a key factor, obvious, but critical. Start out with the cradles sides a tad higher than the stock to ensure the rollers
are riding on the cradles sides as well. I found tha sometimes I may have to initialy help the cradle through the first time because there's not enough surface for the feed rollers, especialy with larger\heavier stock.

Glen

[Sawduster]

My understanding is that you have jointed one edge flat, and are wondering about the faces. In actuality, you should have jointed a face first on the jointer, then an edge, placing the jointed face against the jointer fence so that the edge is perpendicular to the jointed face. You then use the planer to get the opposing face parallel to the jointed face, and rip the unjointed edge on the TS or on the planer so that it is parallel to the previously jointed edge. If you use the TS, then you can clean up the edge if need be on the jointer.

[Glen]

Jerry,

His stock is over 6" wide what if his jointer isn't an 8" or better?
This is why I'd get flat parralel faces via the planer first.

??
Glen

[WoodMangler]

The idea is to get a reference face flat on the jointer first, then that face is referenced to the jointer fence to get the edge at 90 degrees to the face. Sending the wood through a planer will get you 2 smooth faces that are parallel to each other, but it won't get you a flat face... so you still don't have any reference point. If the wood was cupped let's say..., and you planed both sides, you'd still have cupped wood. So you place that cupped wood face against the jointer fence, and you don't end up with an edge that's 90 degrees to the face, and so on... That's why you start by face jointing one face flat on the jointer.

As to the snipe, just send some scrap through first, butt the purpleheart up against the scrap and follow the piece with some more scrap butted up on the trailing end...

[Glen]

Okay ok

I'm the dummy here, as I'm missing something.

You've a 6" jointer. You have 8/4 x 10 stock.
How do you "face" it?

Glen

[Sawduster]

Glen,
No dummies here. Good question. The answer is one of the reasons that I don't have a tailed jointer. I don't have room in my shop for one that is large enough to handle the width some of the rough stock I use. You could face joint it by hand, or face joint the width your jointer would handle, then take the rest down by hand, although I don't know if that would work either.

There is a method involving the power plane that works well for face jointing boards up to a few inches narrower than the capacity of your your planer. This entails screwing two flat narrow boards to your workpiece, one on either side, which hold the concave areas of the bottom of the workpiece slightly off of the planer tables and prevents the workpiece from being compressed between the rollers and the table as it passes through. With several shallow passes you can get a true face on the top of the board, then proceed through the remainder of the four-squaring process. You will, of course, need to get the two edges fairly parallel to each other,or at least straight, before you attach your guideboards to it to joint it on the planer.

If you are gonna make short boards out of long ones, you might cut to rough length before you four-square. The shorter pieces won't flex much under the pressure of the planer rollers, especially if the piece is wide and thick, and with light cuts on each pass, the piece can be gotten true, or darn near.

[WoodMangler]

Honestly, I don't even know if what I do, i.e. the "method" I use is even the "correct" way... but, all that aside, here's what I do... if I can figure out how to explain it.

What I need to do is to get one flat face... so, my options are a smoothing or jack plane and a lot of sweat, or the jointer, or a combination of both sometimes... I use the jointer just like it was a big 'ol hand plane, and take all the "high spots" off with it so that I have an overall flatness to the entire board. I make a pass (This example is using your scenario Glen... a 10" board) then "sight" down the board... find the high spot, make another pass to remove it, etc. It involves flipping the board, but seems to work just fine. After I have an overall flat board, I take it to the planer. Since I NOW have one face that is pretty much flat over the entire length and width of the board, the planer will mirror this face on the other side. Then I plane the side I jointed, since the mirror face is now a flat reference face. Now that I have a flat board, I go back to the jointer and joint the edges, or edge, if I'm going to rip the piece.

If the board is simply too big to do this procedure, I will use my planer sled to get that all-important one flat face.

I hope I've explained this right... it sure is a lot easier to do than to explain!

[cracker]

Thanks, everyone! I got home and the board was a hair under 6" and I was able to run it through my jointer. Then I re-joined the end and put my machinest square on it and guess what square.
Thanks
Everette