Jointer Strategy Question

[MarkSLSmith]

Folks,

I'm planning to joint a lot of black walnut, and I thought I would check here before I do something stupid.

A few years ago, I bought about 500 bd ft of black walnut at $3/bd ft.  It's all rough sawn and it's all 8/4; due to poor storage (not enough stickers, not enough cover) all of the 4/4 was unusable.  

This is not the good stuff.  The price I paid, $3/bd ft, was probably about fair.  Maybe even a bit too high.  The stash yields usable wood, but it also has quite a bit of waste.  

The problem that I want to solve is to make wood selection for projects easier.  Because of the quality issues, it takes a lot of candidate boards to make enough keepers for a project.  I always end up having to joint more, and frankly, sometimes I should have jointed more. 

So my plan is to joint the whole lot in one go.  I'm not about to try to joint 10' long 8/4 stock.  So I need to cut it into smaller lengths.  I think I would almost never need anything longer than 6'.  So my plan is to cut everything into 5' or 6' lengths.  This runs the risk of having quite a few less usable cutoffs, but I think this would be compensated by having more consistent grain matching in my projects.  Is there a better way to solve this problem?

A secondary question is how far to take the process.  At a minimum, I plan to joint one face and one edge.  I could go ahead and plane the other face enough to remove the saw marks.  I see no reason to cut off the other rough edge.

Here in Houston, there is an added advantage to doing this project at this time of year.  

Thanks,
Mark

[Stwood_]

Why not skip plane both sides and leave the length intact.
Then you can view both sides.

[jteneyck]

I would not joint one side w/o planing the other, too.  They risk cupping if you do because the moisture gain/loss won't be very similar. 

I hate cutting boards to shorter length w/o knowing what the project is, but I know what you mean about trying to joint 10 long boards.  No easy answer, but if I had to make a decision I'd cut them at 6 ft.  

John

[FS7]

I guess I'm more of a miser than most, but it's hard to imagine wood being unusable. If it's *really* that bad walnut burns very well. Smells like a classic campfire.

In any case, when I get rough lumber (which is pretty much 100% of my wood), I usually plane both sides. Keep the ends sealed as long as you can, though it's unlikely that you would be dealing with green lumber. Still, if they're sealed, leave them like that. This lets me pick the boards I want for whatever application (like table tops of desk tops or raised panels).

When it comes time to use them, you need to get them as close as possible to final size. In the case of raised panels, for example, they might be wide (10"-13") but not long (maybe 30" max). This is something that can be handled on the jointer. Trying to joint something like an 8' board of almost any width or thickness is nearly impossible to do by yourself. I've never even come close to successfully doing it. When I need to "joint" a board like that for a long glue-up I use a circular saw and a rail. It's not perfect, but it works well enough. That gives me a good side to run through the table saw, and then a good blade will make a pretty clean surface. 

I've tried auxiliary tables and sawhorses and whatnot and never been able to joint a large board, face or edge, with any type of success.

[Gary G™]

I’d be most inclined to build an outfeed support and not cut them.
If you must, probably 6’ yielding 4’ drops.

FWIW: I had a lot of mid-grade BW for which I did something similar. Built lots of nice furniture out of it.
The ‘useless’ 4/4 got milled to about 1/2” and used for boxes and dividers. Some was used for various turning projects.

[MarkSLSmith]

Yep, just to clarify, I didn't buy the rotten 4/4 wood.  That's why I have such an abundance of the thick stuff; it stayed nicely straight even with his poor stacking technique.  I resaw it when I need thinner stuff.

One of my favorite movie quotes, thanks to Clint: A man has got to know his limitations.  Even if I were to rig up an outfeed roller for the jointer, manhandling 8" x 2.25" x 10' long boards would land me in the hospital.  Bad time to go to the hospital right now.  That size board weighs a ton.

Mark

[Derek Cohen]

I would only joint what I am about to use. Joint more, and you run the risk of it moving, and becoming more work.

I would also cut the boards to approximate length for the parts before jointing. This way you preserve the thickness.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Handplanesandmore]

I'm mostly with Derek here. Cut boards to manageable lengths (they mean different things to different woodworkers. 8' is the max for me, but 6' or so is my preference).

Plane both sides and for an amount of what you'll need for the next two projects plus some (10% extra?). Seal the exposed ends, if desired. Both edges are trued too.

Leave the rest as is.

Simon

[MarkSLSmith]

Folks,

I think some of you are missing the main message.  

Yes, it would be fine to only joint what is needed for the project, IF they were all sufficiently similar in grain and color to be usable for the project.  However, this is not reality.  In order to get truly matching boards in color, grain, and the absence of defects, I may need to joint 2x or more boards.  The excess boards may still be usable, but they simply don't match the ones I've already selected.  

So, if I need 25 bd ft for a project, I may need to joint 75 bd ft to obtain adequate matches.  If there are only 500 bd ft total, this is already nearly 20% of the total stash.  So my conclusion is that I might as well bite the bullet now and joint most of it.  I'm mainly interested if others have made similar conclusions.  It sounds like some of those who replied have been ok with doing 6 ft lengths.

It's not such a big deal to go ahead and plane the opposite face, I had already sort of reached that conclusion.  

There are 2-3 really wide boards that I will probably not joint, so as to maximize the yield of wide stock.

Thanks,
Mark

[Alan S]

If you are just trying to see the color of the wood, why not just use a handplane to expose a spot of color near the end of each board? If a board turns out to be sufficiently uneven in color that you need a different board, it's still unlikely you'll need to plane such a large fraction of your stock to find what you need.