Peter G Denmark
Established Member
Hello.
I'm new to this forum, and new to fine woodworking. I am from Denmark, but i now live in Sweden, where i've build my own house. I wanted to get into more delicate woodworking, so i decided to build a 35m2 stand alone insulated workshop as well, which i now nearing it's completion. I guess it will be finished in 3 month or so.
I have started to stock up on basic powertools for the workshop, and so far i have found a Wadkin ags10 tablesaw for 170£ (no sliding table, but the extra long extension wing), an old 400kg cast iron jointer (or do british people call it
a planer?) 400mm wide (about 16") by 2500mm (100") for 200£ with new knives, a really cheap asian no-name thicknesser/thickness planer with 3 sets of new spare knives for 50£ (which is actually doing a pretty ok job) and a new Trend T11 router.
As said - i have limited experience with fine woodworking tools, so i just bought what i thought looked good quality wise, that i could get for, what i thought, was a reasonable price.
Anyway - the latest thing i got is a Dewalt DW682K biscuit joiner for 40£, that i bough online. The seller described the maschine as really well maintained. This was far from the truth. Handle broken, baseplate bent, half the knobs missing, no dust bag - oh well. I welded a new handle, fitted a dustbag from an old ROS, and straightened the baseplate in a wise.
I guess it's pretty close to how i should be out of the box, but i have a few questions:
- The base is not precisely parallel with the blade. It's off/slopes 0,2mm (0,008"), which means that when edge joining, i can feel a very slight burr. It doesn't take much work to sans down, but is this within acceptable precision for these kind of maschines?
- There is a bit of play in the sliding mechanism, which is just a couple of plastic rails, that glides in a grove in the casting. This means that when i hold the fence down to the table, i can tilt the back end of the joiner up and down about 3-4 mm (also 3mm side to side, which i don't care about, seeing as the biscuits allows for sideway adjustment anyway). Is this normal?
I can almost overcome this by using the same pushing technique every time, but i'd like it better without the play. Wrapping some aluminium from a soda bottle around the part of the plastic that glides in the groove might make things right - i guess i'll have to try.
-I get pretty consistent cuts, in the sense that i can't see any difference when eyeballing. But when measuring with a caliper, there are differences of about 0,25mm (0,01"). Could this also be the case with a new joiner of the same brand, or even the more expensive ones?
I love the idea of the biscuit joiner, because i don't have much money, and therefore i mill my own lumber. The cheapest is of course spruce and pine. But these soft woods are more disposed towards warping and bending than the harder woods in my experience. The biscuits are great, because instead of planing the boards totally straight, and lose a LOT of material, i can get away with forcing then into alignment with each other when edge gluing, and the biscuits really help this process.
Would you recommend that i get a better joiner, or am i being to anal?
This post got a lot longer than intended - sorry. My apologies for the metric measurements, the bad grammar and any mis spelling - english isn't my first language .
I'm new to this forum, and new to fine woodworking. I am from Denmark, but i now live in Sweden, where i've build my own house. I wanted to get into more delicate woodworking, so i decided to build a 35m2 stand alone insulated workshop as well, which i now nearing it's completion. I guess it will be finished in 3 month or so.
I have started to stock up on basic powertools for the workshop, and so far i have found a Wadkin ags10 tablesaw for 170£ (no sliding table, but the extra long extension wing), an old 400kg cast iron jointer (or do british people call it
a planer?) 400mm wide (about 16") by 2500mm (100") for 200£ with new knives, a really cheap asian no-name thicknesser/thickness planer with 3 sets of new spare knives for 50£ (which is actually doing a pretty ok job) and a new Trend T11 router.
As said - i have limited experience with fine woodworking tools, so i just bought what i thought looked good quality wise, that i could get for, what i thought, was a reasonable price.
Anyway - the latest thing i got is a Dewalt DW682K biscuit joiner for 40£, that i bough online. The seller described the maschine as really well maintained. This was far from the truth. Handle broken, baseplate bent, half the knobs missing, no dust bag - oh well. I welded a new handle, fitted a dustbag from an old ROS, and straightened the baseplate in a wise.
I guess it's pretty close to how i should be out of the box, but i have a few questions:
- The base is not precisely parallel with the blade. It's off/slopes 0,2mm (0,008"), which means that when edge joining, i can feel a very slight burr. It doesn't take much work to sans down, but is this within acceptable precision for these kind of maschines?
- There is a bit of play in the sliding mechanism, which is just a couple of plastic rails, that glides in a grove in the casting. This means that when i hold the fence down to the table, i can tilt the back end of the joiner up and down about 3-4 mm (also 3mm side to side, which i don't care about, seeing as the biscuits allows for sideway adjustment anyway). Is this normal?
I can almost overcome this by using the same pushing technique every time, but i'd like it better without the play. Wrapping some aluminium from a soda bottle around the part of the plastic that glides in the groove might make things right - i guess i'll have to try.
-I get pretty consistent cuts, in the sense that i can't see any difference when eyeballing. But when measuring with a caliper, there are differences of about 0,25mm (0,01"). Could this also be the case with a new joiner of the same brand, or even the more expensive ones?
I love the idea of the biscuit joiner, because i don't have much money, and therefore i mill my own lumber. The cheapest is of course spruce and pine. But these soft woods are more disposed towards warping and bending than the harder woods in my experience. The biscuits are great, because instead of planing the boards totally straight, and lose a LOT of material, i can get away with forcing then into alignment with each other when edge gluing, and the biscuits really help this process.
Would you recommend that i get a better joiner, or am i being to anal?
This post got a lot longer than intended - sorry. My apologies for the metric measurements, the bad grammar and any mis spelling - english isn't my first language .