Jointer Size?

[TerribleTim68]

TL : DR - I'm curious what size jointer those of you with one are using, and specifically what you are using it for.

Here's my thoughts -
Would a 4" jointer be enough? It seems that the main thing you'd use a jointer for is jointing (go figure) long narrow boards for gluing neck laminates, or for jointing the "sides" of a body wing for gluing to a neck-thru section. In those cases, you're jointing "end grain" (I think? Or is it side grain, is side grain a thing? ) and not the "top. For things like a top, it seems you'd be better suited to drum sand or router plane something that wide because my experience (however limited) has been that a thickness planer or jointer that wide will cause too much tearout. I could be wrong.

My reasoning here is that this goofy ShopSmith I ended up with, they make a 4" jointer that goes on it and I may or may not have a line on one for what may or may not fit my budget.

Thoughts?!?!? Go.....

 

[Beej]

If it's less than buying a standalone jointer, then I'd do it. I have a 6", but like you say, I use it for long stringers and narrow items. Large flat items are better made perfectly flat through a router planing jig. I also have a long 4' router planing bed, but it's easier to just run stringers through the jointer. I only use the long bed if there's something that needs thicknessing to a very specific thickness (ie when matching accent stringers or something).

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Yep. 6" Jet Jointer Ive had for years, but i never use it to flatten the face of a board, just to square the edges, so 4" is going to be good enough for.most jobs. Anything bigger, a router sled is less likely to tear out anyway.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

I own a ShopSmith, and its associated jointer. I'll land in favor of ALSO using your router for this task (with an appropriate straightedge to guide it in "edge-jointing mode," rather than the sled for "planer or face-jointing" mode) but do as you like. Or as the tool acquisition-winds blow....

(or grab a Millers Falls #24 or a Stanley #8.. heh, heh...)

fine, sure the #22 or #7 is more classically referred to as the "jointer" size.

 

[rudy4444]

I worked in a shop where we used a 8" wide long bed jointer so I thought I would pick up a 4" when I started setting up a home shop. I generally found it worthless and found much easier and more accurate ways to joint edges. I'd recommend not spending the money on a jointer, but sometimes these are things we have to find out for ourselves.

 

[Rôckhewer]

I'm curious what size jointer those of you with one are using, and specifically what you are using it for.

Since you asked... I use this one.
It's 8 inches, helical head... I use it when stuff isn't flat.
....it makes stuff flat.

All the surfaces. It will even joint endgrain, not that you need to.
.....(not to be confused with the side grain you mentioned which is ... just grain (flat/quarter/ rift)... just grain.

a thickness planer or jointer that wide will cause too much tearout. I could be wrong

A straight knife cutterhead will typically have trouble with curly figure, or burl... yeah.

Especially if the knives are plain ol' HS steel (not carbide) or not super sharp.
They do fine on regular wood.
But a helical cutterhead is a gift from the gods... a completely different story. Tearout can be nonexistent.

I'm not trying to show off... just answering.
(Shucks... my machinery isn't even fully paid off yet)
Do you need a $3000 8" parallelogram jointer to build nice guitars? . No.

But In my opinion, one does "need" a jointer.
Especially if you aren't a complete whiz with a hand plane (...tattooed British dude) and you don't particularly like router jiggin...

Here's the problem with small lightweight "economy" jointers.
Of which I assume the ShopSmith add-on, to be of similar ilk.
There is never an adjustable outfeed table.
They aren't very strong. The bed is too short. They rattle. The dovetail ways/gibs wear out & get sloppy (non adjustable )
And/or the in/out feed tables get bent out of parallel....
...aaaand now all your joints are slightly radiused.

I like jointers. (Obv)
I would spend some money on one. But not $575 for a ShopSmith plug on.
At least a six inch. With adjustable outfeed.
Straight knife works fine if you keep them sharp...helical is just better.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

I currently have two nice jointers, a 1950's Davis & Wells 6" long bed and a cute little 1950's Delta 4". Both are in nice shape, and I have them tuned up and dialed in. But, I don't use them for straightening edges of instrument boards to be glued up. I do that with my special router fixtures. We've talked over all the reasons at length over on the Router Planing Fixtures thread.

So I don't use my jointers that much, but they are really handy for some things. Particularly for quickly prepping the edge of a board, before sending it through the table saw. A jointer is really good at quickly making the edge of a medium-size board square and approximately straight. Making an edge to slide against the fence of the table saw.

For example, blanking out body boards, straightening the grain. I'll have an 8' long board of walnut, 4/4 thick x 8+" wide. I'll look the board over carefully, and mark it into 20" long segments, avoiding knots and bad spots. Cut it up into the 20" long boards on the chop saw. Now, the grain weaves around, and I want the grain to be approximately straight and parallel to the edge of each board. I use a straightedge and a pencil to draw an angled cut at one edge, running parallel to the grain. Over to my nearby large bandsaw, to quickly saw down that angled line. Then over to the jointer (usually the Davis & Wells). Two quick passes turn the rough bandsawn edge into a straight square edge. Then a couple of steps over to the tablesaw, where I have the fence set a 7 1/2". One pass through, and the board is the correct width, pretty straight on both edges, and the grain is straight and parallel down the length. Later, after the boards are selected, matched and marked, I'll clamp them in the router fixture and precisely cut the edges that get glued up.

That's where a jointer pays off in saving time: as a sidekick to a tablesaw, when you are blanking out a stack of medium-size boards. It's a nice machine to have on wheels, parked over in the corner. You bring it out when you need it.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Those helical cutters are pretty slick, but not cheap! I use one of the little magnetic jigs to set the blades perfectly flush with outfeed, and sharpen them regularly, and it still tears out on anything figured like flame maple. Ive seen videos where people take the guard off to do boards wider than 6", which seems foolhardy. A jointer WILL detroy your hands if you do something stupid, and its always on my mind using it. Ill admit I thought id use it a lot more than I do when i bought it.

 

[thisSNsucks]

I have a 6” that I got a great deal on but I wish I had an 8” or bigger.

I use mine primarily for necks and fretboard blanks. I can flatten 3 piece body blank sections too.

mines got a straight cutter head. On figured woods I usually mist a little water on the face I’m joining and tear out really isn’t bad.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Yeah @Rôckhewer, would I pay almost $600 for the shopsmith add on? No, my budget won’t allow that. But I may have a line on a used one with minimal rust that I could clean up in a few hours for around $100.

Those helical cutters are awesome, but yeah, not cheap. Your jointer looks amazing!

 

[Plain Old Barry]

I have a Delta DJ-20, 8" with an aftermarket segmented cutterhead.

The minimum I would ever buy would be a 6", such as a Jet, Rigid, Delta, or Grizzly. I've found benchtop jointers to be generally useless. I've used serviceable examples of 6" machines from all four mentioned above and can recommend them.

For occasional work without a jointer, you could make a simple planer sled to flatten the first face with a thickness planer. My simple version, used when I need a board face wider than 8", is simply a piece of 3/4" MDF with a lip glued across the leading edge. You place the rough board on the sled, against the lip, and either hot glue or carpet tape wedges under the hollow areas to prevent the board from rocking. The feed roller in the thickness planer will push the board against the lip, taking the assembly through. Take a few passes until the top face is flat all around the edges to fully support itself once you flip the board. The top face doesn't have to be fully flat yet, just rock proof... Ditch the sled, run the board through to flatten the other face. Once both faces are fully self supporting, start flipping end over end with each pass until you get to your thickness. If you do it all the time, you can make a fancy sled, many examples are online.

A good table saw with a good stiff rip blade can create edges good enough for glue ups, replacing the second use of the jointer. You could also rip the board slightly over size and joint the edge on a router table with an offset or shimmed fence, also seen all over the webs.

For small parts, I prefer to mount a sharp hand plane face up in my bench vise and slide the small part across the tool, or carpet tape the small part to my bench and hit it with the hand plane.

 

[Jeff Siddall]

I made a jointing jig for my table saw after failing to get a nice joint on a small bench jointer. Keep in mind that the size of the table on the jointer should ideally be twice the size of the piece you want to run through the jointer.

 

[DanAdams]

I got my 6” prehistoric jointer from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $45

I think anything under 6 inches would be frustrating.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

Other things worth mentioning about jointers:

They appear ridiculously simple to use, but in truth do require certain techniques related to which face or edge to do first, where the hand pressure goes, feed rate, and depth of cut. For example, trying to joint a face or edge belly down is an exercise in futility, or trying to do an edge that's longer than the outfeed with too shallow of a cut may simply create a narrower board with the same curve. There has to be a deep enough cut to keep a decent length of cut edge on the outfeed table.

- Setup is far more important than it might seem on such a simple tool. Such as:
- An outfeed table just a hair low will screw up the ends
- A single knife set wrong in straight knife machines may not cut parallel with the outfeed table, 90 degrees to the fence, or create a scalloped edge.
- Infeed and outfeed tables not coplanar will cause premature baldness
- A fence that isn't perfectly flat will drive you crazy, just as it will on a table saw.

A trick I was taught a long time ago is to leave the fence all the way back unless doing an edge. This lets the back side of the cutter head get used most often with face jointing. When doing edges to be glued, pull the fence all the way forward and use the freshest part of the cutters on the edge. If possible, and it won't always be, orient opposite faces against the fence when doing edges to be joined. Tiny errors in fence angle will mirror each other and cancel out.

 

[TerribleTim68]

I got my 6” prehistoric jointer from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $45
View attachment 4199241
...

Interesting, I would have never thought to check there.

 

[dwizum]

But I may have a line on a used one with minimal rust that I could clean up in a few hours for around $100

Since you asked for opinions - if I were in your shoes, I would be tempted to jump on that purely out of interest in the tool itself - just to get satisfaction from cleaning it up and playing around with it. I would not buy it out of any intention to actually use it in instrument making. On the other hand, if I had $100 to spend and wanted a good solution to joint wood for instruments, and I had the floor or bench space for a jointer, I'd spend the money on a dedicated, standalone router planing jig instead. A really nice one, specifically designed for jointing boards in the sizes you'll use, and not just a generic "pair of rails" do it all planing jig.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Since you asked for opinions - if I were in your shoes, I would be tempted to jump on that purely out of interest in the tool itself - just to get satisfaction from cleaning it up and playing around with it. I would not buy it out of any intention to actually use it in instrument making. On the other hand, if I had $100 to spend and wanted a good solution to joint wood for instruments, and I had the floor or bench space for a jointer, I'd spend the money on a dedicated, standalone router planing jig instead. A really nice one, specifically designed for jointing boards in the sizes you'll use, and not just a generic "pair of rails" do it all planing jig.

Yeah, it's such a quandary, lol! I don't really have the floor space to add a stand-alone jointer to my garage. The stuff I brought home last weekend pretty much tapped me out on available space, the wife has even mentioned "it's full!" Plus, the big shop at the boss's house has a 6" freestanding jointer (the one that took his finger. note to self, never remove the guard). I still think that even given the new equipment I now have, I'll probably still go to his shop to do big tasks and use his big cabinet table saw, the thickness planer, the drum sander (once I get it back operational) and maybe even the finger remover ( ) .

But yeah, I'm so curious about this odd contraption (ShopSmith) that a part of me wants it just out of curiosity.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

The short & sweet on a ShopSmith (a few decades in) (Mine is a "Greenie" MarkV circa early 1950's, IIRC) is that it's a great drill press that's also a great horizontal boring setup, since you can lay it down and let gravity work differently while still drilling. It's also a great 12" disk sander and if you have the 6x48 belt sander accessory, that works well. Other things it can do, with variable levels of "how well compared to a dedicated tool" and variable levels of scary (particularly the tablesaw function.) It was my first lathe, and it went way too fast on slow to be a **good** first lathe, unless you were not me (I work with a lot of firewood - rarely working with sawn blanks that might be remotely balanced when mounted.) Spindle size is also a bit wimpy for that use. But I turned a lot anyway.

The jointer specifically is a fixed output table (it's one part with the base casting) with adjustable blades and an adjustable infeed table. Reminder that you can still lose a finger with the guard in place, if you put the finger where it should not be. Push blocks are your friends.

If yours has the Gilmer (cogged) belt drive and the "Poly-V" upgrade can still be had, consider it. Of course it might cost more than you have in the machine, depending how much you paid for it. Otherwise, just buy Gilmers 3 or 5 at a time, and reorder before you run out. The teeth always shear off when you have work to get done. I think I did mine at the same time as a quill upgrade, since it needed a newer style splined shaft and my old quill was pretty knackered 45-50 years on, plus the new one had two bearings, not one. But it's also a family heirloom (Grandpa bought it new) so there was an aspect of being willing to invest in it for sentimental as well as practical reasons. The greenie that someone chopped open to replace the Gilmer with an external V-belt which I picked up cheap thinking to give it a motor swap has not gotten that level of investment.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Good info @T_Bone_TL, mine too was a family piece. It belonged to my wife's grandpa, who bought it new in 1994-ish (I have a receipt of purchase dated 1994 in all his bookkeeping with it). So it is a Mark V, specifically the 510 model. I would suspect it has had zero "upgrades" so whatever an early to mid-90's 510 came outfitted with is what it's got. He purchased a second drive system to mount the band saw on a dedicated stand, but it appears to be missing the fence so I'll have to just clamp a fence to the table if needed. He also purchased the freestanding scroll saw. I'm not sure what the heck I'll do with a 20" scroll saw, but I now have one.

I've heard the comments about "it doesn't do anything well, but it does do a lot of things". I'll reserve judgement for the time being. I fully understand that it basically operates the exact opposite of typical machines. Take the table saw for instance. Instead of raising or tilting the blade, you lower or tilt the table. The lathe? You move the headstock back and forth instead of the tailstock. So yeah, it's an odd duck.

I am seeing that he did not purchase the overhead router and/or shaper attachments, so I don't have those functions. Honestly, I doubt I would have used them anyways. But yeah, at this point I have a whole $23 invested in all of it, only because I ordered a missing tube for the table saw extension, which came to $23 after shipping. So I don't think I'll be going crazy with investing in upgrades for it. It's kind of one of those "I have it, let's just see if I can make use of it" things.

Appreciate the info on the SS jointer @T_Bone_TL. Sounds like something that might be more trouble than it is worth, even for a small shop like mine.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

1994 model should have PolyV (1964+) and dual-bearing quill (1984+) already. Moving the headstock (mostly) and the quill (a little) for the lathe is no big deal, just different. Be sure to check the centering of the tailstock - the mount is an eccentric, so between the stop collars on the tubes and the eccentric you can line it up just so, but if it wasn't set up right, it won't be. I have the stuff for the router and shaper, you're not missing much (though those parts must have got lost, they were "in the basic package" not "options", IIRC. Then again, that might have changed, if you are looking at paperwork to see that.)

As stated above, I disagree about not doing anything well. It's quite good at the things I mentioned. It also works a treat for running a Beall buffing system with the 5/8" plain arbor.

The tablesaw function is very weird and can be awkward, due to fixed blade (well, actually it's on a movable quill, but keep it in) and moving table. I don't have the bandsaw, I do have a jigsaw (the cruder relative of a scrollsaw) they haven't made in decades as well as the belt sander and jointer.

A scrollsaw can be quite handy - is it @Jisch that uses one to cut control covers so they match perfectly? Lots of folks use them for cutting inlay.