Max, The primary purpose for a jointer is to straighten an edge and make it precise to the face of a board, usually 90 degrees but you can set the fence to any angle out to at least 45. Although dressed lumber comes from the lumber yard it is not necessarily all that straight and not even always square. This often doesn't matter but if you are laminating boards together to form a wide board you want the edges absolutely true to the faces of the boards and you want them straight so they glue up without any gaps.
Another reason is when ripping boards, you cut a straight edge with the jointer so your saw can use that reference for another straight cut absolutely parallel always assuming the saw is properly aligned and tuned. Finally as said by someone else, you can use a jointer to flatten the face of a board which has a crown or a twist in it. this depends on the width of your jointer bed in large measure. Mine is 6 inches and for most things it is adequate but not wonderful for flattening boards of any width. I have some 10 inch wide rough which I can only improve to a point before thickness them. It can be done but I should really have a wider bed for that. Even dressed lumber can get twisted but this is a less common need. You can of course purchase a few quality hand planes. A jointing plane will cost about a hundred and fifty bucks and so will a large long surfacing plane. The skill can be easily enough learned but you will also want a good reliable sharpening system for the blades. I have a Stanley #5 hand plane I really like but I also didn't know how much I liked having a jointer until I bought one. I now like to cut timber just a touch wide and edge it to precise dimension with the jointer just for the quality of the edge and you can make nice edges on MDF and with care even improve the edges on plywood. You don't want a good hand plane to touch those materials. A couple of really good hand planes will do just fine and maybe you should have them anyway but you can get a pretty decent long bed jointer for about the same price as a couple of gook hand planes. If you do decided you want one get as long a bed as you can afford. For general carpentry you don't need one but if you get into even moderate quality furniture making you will probably want one. If you don't have a router or two I suggest start there. Dale Leavens, Cochrane Ontario Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype DaleLeavens Come and meet Aurora, Nakita and Nanook at our polar bear habitat. ----- Original Message ----- From: Max Robinson To: Blind Handyman Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 12:45 AM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Do I really need one? I'm wondering if I really need a plainer and/or joiner. I see Norm on the Yankee workshop use his but he does some pretty advanced stuff. For example, I once saw a show where he visited a wood lot and picked out the trees he wanted. They were felled, taken to a sawmill where they were milled to Norm's specifications. When they arrived in his shop they still had bark on the edges and were very rough. Obviously, he needed to do some plaining on them. In another show he visited an old barn in Georgia which was torn down and he picked out the boards he wanted and they were shipped to Yankee country. I doubt if I will ever do anything even close to this. I go to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy dimensioned boards of pine, oak, or what ever, take them home and build the project. So, do I really need one? If I could only buy one, which one? By the way, older shows of Yankee workshop are now showing on the D I Y channel. In the original P B S version where he used the barn wood he used a hand held metal detector to find nails so he could remove them before ruining his expensive equipment on them. In the D I Y version they showed him removing nails but the part about the metal detector was cut out. The shows have been cut down to 20 minutes so they can get in 10 minutes of commercials. Better watch them on P B S. Regards. Max. K 4 O D S. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Transistor site http://www.funwithtransistors.net Vacuum tube site: http://www.funwithtubes.net Music site: http://www.maxsmusicplace.com To subscribe to the fun with tubes group send an email to, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
