Learning to joint wood


craymer

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I acquired almost 400 bf of white/red oak for free and am wanting to rip the carpet off our stairs and put on the oak treads. They are only 9.5" wide so will need to do some jointing to 11", so from what I gather I need to make probably 11.5" boards.

The problem I have is that I don't have a jointer and have seen a few videos on jointing with a jig for the tablesaw. How reliable is this? Difficulty level to do this without an actual jointer?

As a side question, this wood is 1.5" thick, is that too thick for treads, requiring planing down?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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What wood is under the carpet? And yes 1.5 is a lot to thick, If you put the new treads on top of what already exists, you'll have a problem at the top of the stairs. Unless you remove the wood presently holding the carpet in place. Generally 5/8ths to 3/4 is good enough for stair tread. Removing the existing stair tread will tell you how thick your new treads should be.

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Richard,

Good point, I haven't taken the carpet off yet, but I just know the current treads are construction grade. 

I do have a nice Dewalt planar with the changeable cutter heads, so planing shouldn't be a problem. It is mainly the jointing I'm not sure about.

I would love a jointer, but not sure how much I'd use it after this stair project. 

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You can edge joint with a jig on the table saw. I don't have a jointer either, so I generally do that to remove the bulk and then clean up the edge with a hand plane. This won't deal with jointing the face of the board. For that, I flatten one side enough with a hand plane so it won't rock then put it through the planer.

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I have a jointer, that I never used to join board, only to flatten them on one side, before using the planer.

I bought a 8' long aluminium in a H shape, that I clamp on table saw fence.

I had very good result by:

-making full kerf cut to almost the width at want

-then, taking a cut, which is light enough to engage only 1/2 of the saw teeth.

I use a good sharp saw blade on the table saw.

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