No, A thickness planer will just follow the twists and turns on the opposite side of the board. It will make it thinner of course. the other issue is that you still don't have a straight edge.
Often boards come out of the mill pretty straight but after shipment and storage they change. If you never need to edge join or never really need a truly straight edge it probably doesn't matter. Another way around some of that is to tongue & groove the edges to be joined with a little 'V' groove or bead at the junction. This can hide a multitude of sins and the t & g still provides rather better gluing area than a flat edge. Often even with a flat edge one reinforces with a spline or biscuits. Still, you will get a better joint with the edge jointed. There will be no gaps and you actually want a little less clamp pressure so as not to squeeze all of the glue out of the joint and thus starving it. If you don't need straight edges or don't need voidless joints and your saw always runs absolutely true then you don't probably need a jointer. Actually you can get around some of the squareness issues by marking side up and reversing the ripped boards so that any anomalies in one edge are more or less cancelled by the other edge being reversed. Truly retentive builders will even do that with a jointer but it is a lot easier to keep a jointer absolutely true. You may like to buy a good quality jointing hand plane and fix yourself up with a good bench and vice arrangement. Well cared for, hand planing is very satisfying. You want good sharpening equipment though. With my Worksharp I can hone my plane blade well enough to take the hair off a mouses ... clean as a whistle. I do have a little trouble though keeping the edge absolutely square to the face. There are planes with guides to help you with this though, I just don't happen to have any. 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: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 9:16 PM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Do I really need one? Here's a thought. Could I use a thickness plainer to even out the flats and then rip off just a skinch of each edge on my table saw to make the edges at right angles to the flats and parallel to each other? 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] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ron Yearns" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 5:09 PM Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] Do I really need one? > After you reip a board how smooth is the cut? Do you have a dist sander > and table you can run the board along or do you have to hand sand the > edge? How do you know that you can sand that edge vertically? One of > thes may answer how a jointer can be helpful to you. I have to admit I > haven't used mine very much, but I have a disc sander on a table to sand > the sawn edge. > Ron > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Max Robinson > To: Blind Handyman > Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2008 11:45 PM > 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] > > > > To listen to the show archives go to link > http://acbradio.org/handyman.html > or > ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/handyman/ > > The Pod Cast address for the Blind Handy Man Show is. > http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=saturday > > Visit The Blind Handy Man Files Page To Review Contributions From Various > List Members At The Following address: > http://www.jaws-users.com/JAWS/handyman/ > > Visit the archives page at the following address > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > > If you would like to join the JAWS Users List, then visit the following > address for more information: > http://www.jaws-users.com/ > For a complete list of email commands pertaining to the Blind Handy Man > list just send a blank message to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.2/1222 - Release Date: 1/13/2008 > 12:23 PM > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
