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Last week, there was a lot of interest in the first part of the JointAbility story.
The one question which was asked most was "what about boards longer than 5
feet?"
A good question. Here is the answer: the 8-foot JointAbility. This goes
together and is used exactly like the smaller unit.
I won't go into the installation step-by-step.
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I imagine that the long JointAbility
will do a great job of trimming and jointing long, rough cut boards — and I will get
some in and put it to this test.
BUT, what I wanted to do is to see if it could be the answer for large panel
cutting. In the past, you have seen me cut large panels to rough dimensions and then take
them to the table saw to make the final cuts.
My question is "why not do all the cutting and edging right
here?" I have set up a "large panel work area." Since this is so portable,
I will take it outside when the weather warms up a bit more.
I am bringing in the heaviest panel I can think of — a 4' X 8' sheet of
white melamine chip board. I am using one of those panel handlers (photo insert is from
Rockler catalog - click here to go there.)
All I have to do is guide the heavy panel to the horses and flip it on —
much easier on my back.
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May you learn from my
errors. As soon as I laid the heavy sheet on the horses, two things became very evident.
First, the height of the horse is a bit low — the JointAbility frame raises the panel
about 1 1/2". Second, when you try to push a panel this heavy and large, the horses
want to move and teeter.
So off comes the large panel for the moment.
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It didn't take any time at all (or
skills) to find some boards that I could use to both raise the horse surface and tie the
horses together. I did make sure that the dry wall screws are countersunk so that they
will not mar the surface of the panel.
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Now with the heavy panel supported on
the horses, I can make my marks for my first cut.
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On the "outfeed"
side, I place a couple of roller stands to hold the cutoff.
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I have moved my marks
so that they line up with the guide bar on the side away from me. The piece that I am
cutting to exact dimentions is the piece in the JointAbility, not the cut off. You will
see why in the next step.
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Now, I run my router
along the JointAbility's guide bar. I have a perfect edge that is exactly cut to my marks.
You can see that the cut off piece is resting patiently on the roller stands.
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I have rotated the piece, and I am now
cross cutting to the dimensions.
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Then, I route the edge to the exact,
final dimension.
It is interesting to note that while the trim saw leaves some chipout of this
board, the router gives a perfect finished edge.
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Having cut the panel to the dimensions I
want, I adjust my router depth to 1/2 the thickness of the board. Now, I can see how easy
it is to use this setup for dadoing and rabbeting the pieces.
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Happily, it couldn't be easier. The
fact that the JointAbility's guide board can be lined up with where the dado or rabbet
will be, makes this task easy and accurate.
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The groove and rabbets are cut
perfectly and with no chip out.
The JointAbility works very well for cutting large panels. It saves my back,
and I no longer have to cut every panel twice.
Next, what I want to do is to get some long rough cut boards and see how this
JointAbility will work with them — coming next.
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