(upbeat music) marc: welcome to episode six of "the wood whisperer" video podcast. i'm your host, marc spagnuolo,and i'm very excited. why am i excited, you ask. today, my festool dust extractionsystem is being delivered. you know you've got it bad when you get excitedover a vacuum cleaner. anyway, i'm also excited today
because we're finallygonna do some woodworking. (sound of applause) marc: thank you. thankyou. okay. okay. okay. okay. okay. okay. (sound of applause) there's no better place tostart than at the beginning. most woodworkers know thatyou won't get very far without properly milled lumber. a properly-milled boardwill have each face milled flat and parallelto its opposing face,
and each edge is gonna be straight. it's also going to be 90degrees to the adjacent face, and parallel to the opposite edge. why do we need square and flat lumber? fine furniture starts with fine jointery, and you can't produce fine jointery without properly-milled boards. you see, if we startwith even slightly bowed, warped or crooked boards,
all of our referencepoints will be thrown off, and all of our resultingjointery would suck more than my five horsepower cyclone. (sound of 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 tobetter-quality furniture
and more fun in the shop. every project i do startsright here at the jointer. it's the first step in a four-part process that i use to mill up my boards. before we get started,let's go over a few details. voiceover: before jointing,i like to check to make sure that the fence is exactly90 degrees to the bed. i usually check several locations along the infeed and outfeed 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 asilicone-free wax, though, because silicone has been known to cause finishing problems down the line. next, i adjust the depth of cut to no more than a sixteenth of an inch.
lastly, i check for loose-fitting clothes. marc: i would like tojust take a few moments to talk about safety. i will always try to providethe best example possible when it comes to safe operating procedure. i'll even mention safety tipswhenever i think of them, but nothing substitutes for common sense. no matter how safe i am, ultimately it's yourdecisions in your shop
that will determine how safe you are. to sum it up, read all your manuals, don't do anything stupid and above all, use your common sense. respect these tools. lookat what they can do to wood. imagine what they cando to flesh and bone. i'd like to start by jointingone of these faces first. we can't just randomlyselect a side and go for it. we need to actually look at the properties
of the board and determinewhat the smartest way to approach it is. as i sight down here,i'm looking for a cup, and i do see there's aslight rocking motion here. i've drawn on here with marker to show you the orientation of the cup. the safest way to cut thisand actually joint this would be to joint the bottom. put it so that it looks like a frown,
because we have two pointsfor the wood to rest on, as opposed to one point like this, where it can rock and pivot,which isn't a good idea. the second thing i wanna look for is if there's a bow in the board. this one's pretty straight. it's not really gonna be a problem for us, but if there were a bow, you'll find two schools of thought.
some people swear byrunning it as a frown, and some people swear byrunning it as a smiley face. do a little research. findout what works for you. both of them will get you there. you just need to know at different lenghts how each one is gonna behave, and make the right decision for yourself. the third thing is grain direction. i've gone ahead and actuallydrawn the orientation
of the grain to show you, sort of exaggerate what i can't show you with the camera that far away. essentially, you have to knowthat the blades in the jointer are spinning clockwise. as we run this across there, we wanna make sure that theblades are going with the grain, so that when it knocks theselittle pieces of wood out, we're not gonna get chip-out.
if we run it through this way, you can see they'll actually break off and create a much rougher cut. you always wanna cut with the grain. now that we know how toselect the right face and the right direction, let's get it on. voiceover: i start by makingmarks along the board's face, using chalk or a pencil. these marks will let us knowwhen the face is true and flat.
using push blocks, iapply a moderate amount of pressure as i push thepiece over the blades. be sure to focus your pressure on the outfeed side of thetable for best results. once the face is flat, imark it with a squiggly line so i don't confuse it with the other face. marc: now that we have one true face, we can put that face upagainst the jointer's fence and true one of our edges.
voiceover: i start bymarking the edge with chalk as i did on the face. with the previously-jointedface against the fence, i begin jointing. i like to think of myright hand as the pusher, and my left hand as the featherboard that applies pressure downwardand against the fence. be very, very aware of the location of your hands duringthis entire operation.
marc: at this point,you might ask yourself, "why not just do the othertwo faces on the jointer?" that will make those other twosurfaces flat and straight, but what it won't do is make them parallel and co-planer with the first two surfaces. we could essentially end upwith a wedge-shaped board. by far the easiest way toachieve a co-planer surface on the other rough faceis with the power planer. voiceover: with thepreviously-jointed face down,
i make my marks and send theboard through the planer. for best results, i keep the cut depth down to about a sixteenth of an inch. be sure to keep yourfingers above the board at all times to avoid pinching. marc: the final step in the process is to true up our second edge. the easiest way to do that is to go to our shop workhorse - our table saw.
voiceover: at this point, i take off just enough material to clean up the edge. it's a good idea to use apush stick for added safety. marc: i've got a couple of tips for you that may actually save youfrom some future headaches. first of all, wheneveryou pass these boards through a planer, and evensometimes with a jointer, you can actually observe aphenomenon known as snipe. that actually is a divot that's created
at the beginning or thetrailing edge of the board. it's really a result, in most cases, of a pressure roller issue, and that it actuallycuts deeper initially, then, once the wholeboard's under the rollers, it cuts nice and even, andagain at the trailing edge. it'll cut a little bit deeper. the easiest way to circumvent the problem is to cut your boardsabout six inches longer
than they actually need to be, and if you do wind up having snipe, you can just clip off theends and there's no worries. the second tip i haveconcerns wood movement. you have to understand that the internal moisturecontent is usually greater than the moisture contentat the outer edges, so when we plane these boards down, we expose fresh wood witha higher moisture content.
this is especially true in woods that have not been fully cured or properly acclimated to your shop. if you mill it to finaldimension in one shot, you may come back the next day to a very disappointingpile of warped boards. to avoid this disaster, mill your lumber downto size in two sessions. don't go to final dimensionon the first day of milling.
let it sit for a week and then go back and repeat the milling process. in most cases, though, thiscan be avoided altogether by making sure yourboards have a few weeks to acclimate to your shop's conditions. what if you don't haveall the big power tools? what if you're dealing with a board that's just too big forthe tools that you do have? let's quickly reviewsome alternative methods
for jointing and planing. the first and most obviousjointing alternative is to use a bench plane. the longer the bed, the better. i'm by no means an experton plane techniques, and i don't feel i would do you any favors by showing you my technique, so i recommend checking out an article in "fine woodworking" magazine number 119
called "jointing by hand." voiceover: this techniquerequires a few simple tools, a router outfitted with a straight bit, and a secure straight edge. simply clamp your straightedge the appropriate distance from the edge and routaway the rough surface. you should be left with a nice clean edge when it's all said and done. to joint a rough edge on the table saw,
i start by using double-stick tape to attach my rough boardto a straight piece of three-quarter inch plywood. as the straight edge of theplywood rides against the fence, the rough board is trimmedperfectly straight. it's pretty simple to make a homemade jig solely for this purpose, so do a google search forsome really cool ideas. to joint a rough edge on the router table,
i start by double-stick taping a sixteenth-inch shim tothe left side of the fence. next, i align my straightbit with the shim. at this point, we've essentiallycreated a mini-jointer. watch closely as the edgebecomes perfectly straight. marc: just as with edge jointing, the most obvious alternativefor flattening a board is with a bench plane. there's a really good article posted
on the wwway forum by my good friend, tom. you can copy the link below, or simply click on the link located in the articles and tutorials section of "the wood whisperer" home page. i know at least someof you have confronted a problem like this before. you've got a nice beautiful wide board, and you don't really knowhow to get that face flat
without cutting it into smaller pieces that will fit on your six-inch jointer. watch this next tip and you'll see how i take care of this problem. voiceover: to do this technique, i use a piece of three-quarterinch plywood as my sled. the piece should be no widerthan your planer can handle, and the length depends onthe length of the board that you're trying to flatten.
i lay the board down in the sled and determine where the high spots are. using hot glue, i securethe board to the sled and alleviate any rockingmotion at the same time. the goal is to completelyimmobilize the board. after letting the glue set, i give it one last test for stability. after several passes through the planer, i use a straight edge to determineif the board is truly flat.
it looks pretty good. marc: one of the coolest waysthat i know to flatten a board, especially if it's a really wide board that's just too wide for the planer - maybe it's even odd-shaped and it's just not somethingyou would ever send through a planer - is to use a router sledon a set of guide rails. it's a really cool technique
and it's actually pretty simple. you have whatever boardyou're looking to flatten immobilized on the surface, kinda like we did on the lastexample of board flattening when we put it on a sled for the planer. we just need to immobilizethis on a bench, use the hot glue, usesome shims if you need to. just make sure it doesn'trock and it's very stable. then, you need two guide rails,
which will sit on either side, and then some sort of a sled. this is just a solid piece of wood, but it's just as an example. you would drill a hole in the middle that allows your bit to come through. you would actually attachthe router to this sled to immobilize it and then bring this down so that the bit is touching thesurface at the lowest point.
then, you simply turn everything on. obviously, you wanna wax these rails, and just go back and forth until the entire thing is flattened. because it can't move, youwill get a flat surface. when i've done really,really large projects, for instance, experimentally, i wanted to flatten my work bench without using traditional methods.
i actually wanted to doit using this method. i actually constructed this big guy here. this was the actual sledthat i used for my router, and it fits inside here. the bit goes through that little hole, and i had a huge router sled setup with these big giant guide rails. i actually just used two by fours, and made sure they weremilled perfectly flat,
and used that to do my bench. it worked really good. just make sure your sled is very rigid. you can see this one'scompletely reinforced, and is not gonna flex or bend under the weight of the router. very cool technique. there's also an article on the wwway forum on how to do this exact technique.
there's a lot of pictures there. it explains the whole process in detail, so you may wanna check that out. go to the link below, or you can find the link on the home page at thewoodwhisperer.com. i hope you've enjoyed this episode of "the wood whisperer," and i hope you have a better understanding
of proper milling techniquesand why we need them. if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email us at thewoodwhisperer@gmail.com. be sure to check out the website at www.thewoodwhisperer.com. we always have newfeatures and new articles that won't necessarilymake it into the feeds, so be sure to visit the siteas frequently as possible.
our newest feature ofthe website, in fact, is the wood whisperer store. it's really just anamazon.com affiliate site, but your purchasesactually help out the show. speaking of which, i'dlike to take a moment to thank you guys whoactually placed orders at the wood whisperer store, and clicked on the ads on the home page. your support is really appreciated,
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when we finally make our first project. i was thinking something like this. it's my signature end-grain cutting board, and it's a lot easierto make than it looks. i'll show you how onthe next wood whisperer. (mellow guitar music)