Sell me on the SS jointer

[RFGuy]

Spec wise, it looks like I could get a new Grizzly jointer with a spiral cutterhead delivered cheaper than the SS one, and still have a larger table overall.

Thanks everyone who contributed to this thread so far...it s been an interesting read, and I don't have too much to add, except to go back to a question that the OP had about the Grizzly with the spiral cutterhead. A couple of reasons i have been happy with the SS jointer are 1) as with all the SS tools it doesn't take up much space, and this is really important in a small shop and 2) when I bought the jointer I remember that one of its selling points was that a panel made of 3" pieces would ultimately remain more stable than a wide single board. This seemed an important consideration then and still seems important now. So for me and the projects I have made, the width capacity is less of an issue than the footprint. If I do need to plane something wide, I can use my planer with shims or a jig. That said, as others have posted, most of the use my SS jointer gets is for edge jointing.

Now...if I could get a jointer with a spiral cutterhead for less $$ than an SS would I? Probably yes, based on all I have read and heard about how easy it is to rotate the spiral cutters to get a new edge. It seems like a much less fussy procedure than changing blades.

Ed,

Thanks. I definitely agree with you on the space savings aspect for the 4" jointer and that shouldn't be discounted. I appreciate you bringing that up as it is a selling point for the Shopsmith jointer. However, on the idea of 3" wide boards being more stable than wider boards in a panel, I'd really like to understand where that idea came from. Sounds to me like something a company selling only 4" jointers would come up with to market said jointer to customers, i.e. a myth. As long as the board is stable after dimensioning and is assembled with a good quality glue, then I don't see why a 6" board would be any less stable than a 3" board for a panel. Every panel I have ever created has had 6" or wider boards and never bowed or had any issues.

[chiroindixon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19jzpEuFl4
( At the 3.00-3.38 mark)

" Sounds to me like something a company selling only 4" jointers would come up with to market said jointer to customers, i.e. a myth."

Blame it on "The Icon" and YouTube?

Doc

[RFGuy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k19jzpEuFl4
( At the 3.04-3.38 mark)

" Sounds to me like something a company selling only 4" jointers would come up with to market said jointer to customers, i.e. a myth."

Blame it on "The Icon" and YouTube?

Doc

Thanks. Never saw that before. I like Doug, but I suspect he is merely speaking Shopsmith talking points here. He showed what looked like a 6" x 3/4" board that was badly cupped and twisted. First of all, you don't go to the big box stores and buy 3/4" thick lumber and expect to plane and joint it to final dimensions unless you are making something thin like tray inserts for that jewelry box for your wife. Also, skip that board and get the straightest and most flat one you can find in the stack at the hardware store. So, I reject his base argument because that isn't why we want to joint a board larger than 6". IF you do your own milling in your shop, you start with the best lumber you can get for the best price you can get. Usually this means getting a thicker board, e.g. 8/4 lumber. Then you mill it, in your own shop, to the dimensions needed for a project. This necessitates needing a jointer larger than 4" IMHO for many projects. He also says a "wider board will tend to recup". IF the board is stable at final dimensions, there will be some small wood movement with time due to humidity changes. These are small changes though, if the board was properly acclimated before assembly. Now, all boards can move, but a wider board is no more likely to "recup" than a narrower board. I don't even like that word, but "recupping" will only happen if the lumber wasn't fully acclimated after getting near dimension before being cut to final dimension. Means there is still moisture migration through the board which is causing it to continue to move after dimensioning. I hate to say it, but Doug created a myth in the Shopsmith community and I have many projects as proof that panels with 6" wide boards are easily possible, not "recupping" after decades of active use and significant room humidity changes.

[BuckeyeDennis]

A few years ago, I had an in-depth tour of a large cabinet factory. The first step in their panel-making process was to rip all boards, including flat wide ones, down into relatively narrrow boards, which were then milled square and glued up. When I asked why they ripped nice wide boards into smaller ones, the reply was that it made the panels more stable.

I don’t completely buy that argument, but I can think of two situations where it could help.

1) The board has significant internal stresses. In this case, cutting it apart may allow the pieces to move enough to relieve those internal stresses. Presumably before the wood is milled square, and not after.

2) The board contains a section of pith or “near pith”. This is what causes almost all serious cupping that I see. My solution in this situation is to rip out the pith section, leaving me with two narrower but nice quarter- or rift-sawn boards and a small section of pith scrap.

But I don’t buy the argument that wide boards should always be ripped apart and glued back up. Let’s say that I have a beautiful flat 7” wide quartersawn board. If I rip it in half, I have two nice flat 3.5” quartersawn boards. And if I then glue them back together in the same orientation, the board is essentially identical to what it was originally, save for about 1/8” of material having been replaced with a glue joint. And I just can’t see that having any significant impact on future wood movement.

Playing devil’s advocate now, the above scenario assumes that I knew that the nice wide board had no significant internal stresses. If I was wrong about that, it may have been better to rip it in half. So for a production shop that has to think about warranty issues, always ripping wide boards apart for glue-up may be the best strategy after all. But personally, I much prefer the look of wide boards, and I feel like I can probably spot the boards with major internal stresses (as they’ll probably won’t be straight and flat in the first case).

[RFGuy]

Dennis,

Thanks. Yeah, I almost brought up board stresses, but I left the door open for you. Good info. Ideally, the home hobbyist (like myself) is selective at the lumber yard and tries to get the best looking boards possible. Of course, the prettiest board, can still have unseen internal stresses. So, my opinion is the cabinet factory is doing 2 things. One, they are wanting to maximize the return on ALL the lumber they purchase and they can't be so selective on lumber for a project like a hobbyist can be. In other words, they need to minimize scrap and sawing into smaller widths help them to do this. Also, as you mention some of their stock will include pith. Second, they are likely not waiting for acclimation and some lumber could be green. Some cabinet shops go for kiln dried, but that adds cost, so some won't. The home hobby woodworker has to be patient and let wood acclimate in the shop (or house if it won't fit in your small shop ). This includes acclimating before and after cutting to near final dimension. Without proper board stacking with spaces, significant cupping is inevitable in my opinion. Of course, there are "wonky" boards sometimes that have internal stress, e.g. those that re-close the gap as they exit the TS on ripping. Care must be taken when trying to incorporate any board with internal stress like this into a project. I really don't know how many (what %) of boards these really are, because I think often non-straight or twisty boards getting lumped into the stress category when really they are a function of how they were stored post sawmill resulting in uneven moisture movement. JMO. Absolutely agree with you on the look of projects with wider boards. Aesthetics matter!

P.S. Any idea what that particular cabinet shop considered to be a "relatively narrow" board? Wondering what they started with and ended up with. I mean they could have been getting 10-12" wide boards coming into the shop and halved them.

[chiroindixon]

If I was wrong about that, it may have been better to rip it in half. So for a production shop that has to think about warranty issues, always ripping wide boards apart for glue-up may be the best strategy after all.

Exactly the point. How many of us here have used pallets, long boards from John Deere combine packing, sliced logs off the property, dumpster diving, etc, etc? With stories regarding "movement".... Oh, the next day "ramen noodles" were an education.

And I've bought select lumber from the local mill(s) to mitigate any cupping, except to my wallet.

So.. The more I read on this subject, the more I'm looking seriously at the sled/glue gun approach with my Pro Planer... perhaps my next upgrade will be a Shelix cutter head. Now that seems to be a great addition supplied by a Covid check.

Doc

https://mywoodcutters.com/SHELIX_for_sh ... nch_Planer

[edflorence]

Ha!

My little aside about the greater stability of narrow boards sure got some attention! Sorry, guys, I wasn't trying to poke a stick in the hornet's nest, just re-stating a "truism" I have heard many times over the years. I always believed it, and certainly know it to be true if the board you are beginning with has a pith line...that has got to go, which leaves you with two narrower boards. But is it a universal truth that wide panels are less stable? I guess I never really questioned it.

Looking into the question, I found that a quick search on line shows much disagreement on the subject. Most posters seem to feel that wider panels are more attractive and some claim they are more historically accurate as well. The "narrow is better" camp say that wide boards, varying from almost quarter-sawn at the edges to flat-sawn in the middle, are more difficult to retain flat. All boards tend to "cup" toward the bark side if unrestrained by joinery. Wider boards cup more. If the joinery restrains the cupping but does not allow for movement somehow, a crack results. A quote from a post to a FWW forum sums up the thinking of this camp: "The most stable boards have uniform growth ring geometry (pure quarter-sawn being the absolute ideal), and it's much easier to achieve uniformity with narrower boards. Hence, a wide glue-up of a number of boards will - all other things being equal - stay flatter than the same glue-up made from only 3 or 4 boards."

I think the idea of making panels from narrower boards likely started long before anyone from Shopsmith came up with it just to promote a product, and seems likely that it was an attempt to create panels with as much quarter sawn grain as possible.

The other team maintains, based on experience and the evidence of old furniture made with wide boards, that the narrow boards are not worth the time and extra effort. Carefully selected wide boards work fine as panels, per these folks, and look better to boot..

I think I will look into this some more. The truth might be that the answer to the question of whether or not use narrower boards is "it depends." Some species are inherently more stable in changing humidity conditions, and some wide boards can have a lot of vertical grain...these boards might work well as wide panels. But how many such "perfect" boards come through our shops?

[JPG]

I dare say 'historically'(a century or more ago) wider boards were more perfect than today's.

More quarter sawn and closer ring growth and likely less internal stress.

So older and wider makes sense.

[edma194]

A lot of chestnut was once available. I find old woodwork around these parts often made from 8-10" wide chestnut boards. The more stable boards won't show much figure though.

[RFGuy]

The other team maintains, based on experience and the evidence of old furniture made with wide boards, that the narrow boards are not worth the time and extra effort. Carefully selected wide boards work fine as panels, per these folks, and look better to boot..

I think I will look into this some more. The truth might be that the answer to the question of whether or not use narrower boards is "it depends." Some species are inherently more stable in changing humidity conditions, and some wide boards can have a lot of vertical grain...these boards might work well as wide panels. But how many such "perfect" boards come through our shops?

Ed,

Thanks. Yeah, I guess we should all expect there to be different opinions on this and I had to take a step back and think about it more. When I did my earlier post I thought about not just what type of saw method was used at the sawmill, but you also have to consider which board you actually get from that tree. Each one is going to have different movement vectors as it dries and acclimates. Not all boards from a tree are created equal! I won't talk about stress because that usually typifies something out of the ordinary for a given tree IMHO. Let's assume an ideal tree with boards that have minimal to no stress, but will move as moisture flows in & out of them. One key point, I think, is what are you building your projects out of it? I tend to build more "fine" furniture, etc. For the former, I only build in hardwoods while the latter are softwoods. Not too many panels needed for outdoor projects typically, so all of my panels have been hardwoods and interior use. My understanding is most/all softwoods are fast growing trees and my assumption is these are harvested early yielding small tree trunks. Hardwoods are slow growers by comparison and my assumption is these are harvested when they are large and can give a higher return with larger tree trunks. Assuming flat sawn and small tree trunk diameter on softwoods (much larger tree trunk on hardwoods), I would argue that cup-ability is higher on softwoods than on hardwoods. Intuitively, I can see how hardwoods having a much larger trunk diameter would yield many individual boards through flat sawing that approximate either a rift or quarter sawn cell structure. Said another way, I suspect cup-ability is higher on softwoods than on hardwoods. Not true of every single board extracted from the tree, but from a probability standpoint I believe hardwood boards are generally less susceptible to cupping than softwoods. Someone would have to do the math (geometric proof) on this to verify, but that is my theory.

I still say that IF one properly acclimates a board after near dimensioning (before final dimensioning) and then assembles the panel, there is a MUCH greater chance of NO cupping irrespective of whether it is a 3" or 6" wide board IMHO. I do believe many of the cupping issues reported in woodworking are less about the width of the board or internal stresses and more about rushing to finish a project and not giving the wood proper time to move. Also why you need to start with thicker lumber and plane/joint down to final dimension or else you will have a 1/4" thick board, but flat & straight board, to build with in the end. IF you want a project to cup, go out and buy green lumber, cut it right away and assemble it immediately.

I dare say 'historically'(a century or more ago) wider boards were more perfect than today's.

More quarter sawn and closer ring growth and likely less internal stress.

So older and wider makes sense.

JPG,

Yeah, I agree. It is partly the trees available then vs. now, but also today there is more of a rush to harvest trees before they are mature which is unfortunate.

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