Does your table saw blade leave ‘chatter’ or vibration marks on the stock you are cutting? Most of the economical table saw blades vibrate while they are spinning. When ripping stock, this vibration leaves a slightly uneven cut.
An edge joiner is the way to square up and clean up the edges of the wood. However, not every home wood worker has an edge joiner.
The typical solution to remove the unevenness is to use a sander. Be it either a quarter inch vibrating sander, random orbital sander, or a belt sander. Sanders work well, although there is a good chance that the sanded surface will be slightly uneven, due to uneven pressure.
Consider using the bench top planner. The potential problem here is that the board is being run through the planner on edge so that it could tip over and the planner would destroy the edge. So, group a set of boards of the same width together and plane them at the same time. This will prevent the stock from tipping over while being run through the planner.
Note: I have only tried this technique on a group of boards that were two inches wide. The wider the stock the more boards you will need to run through the planner at the same time.
I am working on a Christmas project where I needed four 2” x 3/4” x 48” legs. Cut the stock and eight wider at 2 1/8 inches. Set up the bench top planner to 2 1/16. Take all four pieces and hold them together as a bundle. With the table saw cut side facing up towards the planner’s cutter head run the four pieces through, at the same time. Lower the planner cutter head to 2 inches and run the other side through.
December 14th, 2006 at 6:57 am
Here is an interesting tip to this method:
Clamp several boards together with a spring clamp. Position the spring clamp toward the bottom of the stock, so that it will not strike the cutter head. And then run the block of wood through the planer. Yes, it does seem a bit risky to run a metal clamp through your bench top planer. Follow me on this for a minute. Back to the example of two inch wide stock that needs to be edge joined. The stock will be run through the planner on edge, the cutter head will be adjusted to 2″. If the clamp is 1″ wide, positioning it at the bottom of the material will leave just under 1″ clearance between the clamp and the cutter head.