How to Use the Router Table As a Jointer

When you think about jointing the edge of a board in order to get it smooth, straight and square, you're probably thinking about using a jointer for that. However, we can also use a router table for jointing pieces. Let me show you how that works.

Remember that on a jointer, the infeed table and the outfeed are offset from each other. The outfeed table is made perfectly even with the knives. The infeed table is just a little bit below the knives, about 1/32 of an inch. In order to make that happen in a similar way at the router table, you got to be able to create that offset. On this fence which is a commercially made fence, what we can do is slip the outfeed fence out. Put behind it one of these two shims and put it back on. The shims that came with this fence are 32nd of an inch thick and 16th of an inch thick.

If I put one of these behind this face and put it back on to the extrusion, it offsets this outfeed side by that amount, a 1/32 or 1/16 of an inch much like on a jointer. A lot of the newer commercially made router table fences do this. They’ve got this built-in. Let me show you how you can make this happen with a shop-made fence.

Remember that what we need is an offset, so what I've got here is a shop-made fence made out of melamine. All I did was put a piece of plastic laminate, not a real pretty piece but it's plastic laminate on this outfeed side. Laminate is about 1/16 of an inch thick. So by having laminate here but not here, I automatically have 1/16 of an inch offset between these two faces.

Let’s have a look at our router bit. What you really need for this is any straight bit in your router table but what you'll find is that in setting it up, it's a lot easier to setup if you have a bearing on here. This is called a flush trim router bit. The bearing is exactly the same diameter as the cutter here. You'll see in just a second, that’s going to make our fence alignment a whole lot easier. I've got the height of the bit set so that I know I'm going to cut completely through my ¾ inch material.

Let’s look at the alignment. What we have to do is get this cutter at the top of its swing aligned with this face. I'm going to bring my fence forward and I'm going to clamp just one end to start with. With the backend of the fence clamped in place, I can pivot this end in small amounts until I get my alignment. To get the alignment, this is where that bearing is going to come into play. I'm going to put a straight edge across the laminate until it's even with the face of that bow bearing. If we didn’t have a bearing on that bit, if it was just a regular straight bit, we could do this but it should be here trying to align the straight edge with the carbide cutter. It's a whole lot easier to do this with the bearing.

Now, I'm going to clamp the other end. Then what we can do is make a test cut in this piece and we’ll be able to tell by how that cut goes if this is setup correctly or not. One of three things is going to happen. If everything is perfectly set, our board will smoothly move across that cutter unto the outfeed side. Another possibility is that as we begin to cut, that first corner might bud into this laminate. What that would tell me is that I'm not taking enough material off. In other words, the fence is too close to me. Alternatively, maybe it gets past the cutter unto the laminate and at the very end here, it snipes just a little bit. It digs in. that would tell me that I'm taking too much wood off. The fence is too far away. So, we’ll see show it goes and if we need to make some small adjustments, we will. I’m ready to plug the router in.

[Demonstration]

That cut went very, very well and that’s because having the bearing on that bit makes it so easy to align the outfeed side. It really simplifies the process. Setting this up with just a conventional straight bit without a bearing but sometimes it takes relocation or two in order to get your fence in just the right spot. I'll tell you what, even though I've got a jointer in my shop, this is something I do fairly often and there are a couple of reasons for it. One is that manmade materials are very hard on steel knives and jointers. It's the glue inside that material; it's very abrasive on those jointer knives. If I ever get into an application where I need to clean up an edge on plexiglass, solid surface countertops, particle board, plywood, I'll do that here at my router table instead of the jointer because router bits have carbide cutters on them, so they can go up against that manmade material and hold up a lot better.

The other thing I like about this is when I'm handling small parts like small face frame pieces which are quite narrow; I find it safer and easier to handle them here on the router table than it is to do it on the jointer. The biggest limitation we have here is length. If I had a 10-foot long board, it’d be pretty hard to edge joint it here on this small router tabletop.

The other is thickness. If you have a material that’s quite thick, then it can be difficult to do your jointing here on the router table because those tall bits might flutter just a little bit under cutting pressure and you don’t quite get the quality of edge that you're after. For ¾-material, for manmade material, it works great.