Thickness Planer as a Jointer

There comes a time when your jointer just isn't large enough to handle the width of your stock and you really don't want to rip it down so it can fit. I have an 8" joiner that I had no trouble with when it came time to ripping my stock to 8", but it's been laid up for the pass three years and in the interim I purchased a 6" which does a really nice job for jointing edge and faces up to 6", but I just didn't feel like ripping all my stock to 6" to make up door panels. So I have a 13" thickness planer that can in effect I can make a 12" jointer out of it. The trick is to either build a sled or to use rails to support your stock as it's fed through.

In this case I decided to use rails as it was simple and fast to do. First cut your rails from 3/4 plywood about an inch longer than and a half inch tall then the stock you want to join. I have some Honduran 4/4 mahogany so I made my rails about 1-1/2" tall and in this example about 24" long as the stock was 22" long.

Place the rails on a flat surface, I used my table saw and place some shims between them to elevate the stock above the top of the rails.

 

 

 

In most cases you'll only need to get the stock up about a 1/4" and that should be sufficient enough to plane the edge.

 

 

 

Place the stock on top of the shims and position the rails on each side. Place a clamp to apply pressure and using another small shim press down on both rails to make sure they are in complete contact with the table saw surface. Then tighten the clamp a bit more.

 

 

Do the same on the other side and then firmly tighten the clamps and drive home the screws.

 

 

 

Once the rails are secure you can then begin to pass the stock through your thickness planer just like you'd pass any other stock through.

 

 

 

Just like with any other type stock you'll need to make several passes to joint the face.

 

 

 

 

 

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