I made this little paipo out of a pauwlonia blank that someone was kind enough to glue up for me. I really enjoyed the process and the way it turned out and I’d like to make a couple more to experiment with and share with friends. I’m a hack when it comes to woodworking (and most else) but gluing up blanks myself seems plenty straightforward… only thing is I don’t have access to a jointer, and I’m wondering if I can expect planks to be straight/flat enough to glue up as-is or with just a table saw cut along the edges to true them up. Would really appreciate some insight, thanks!
EDIT: Thanks @unclegrumpy (for the advice and the compliment)! For whatever reason I’m not able to reply to the post, but wanted to give thanks.
Depends. If the saw fence is aligned properly and you feed it thru smoothly and most importantly if there’s no tension in the wood when you make your initial cuts. There are several techniques for truing edges without a jointer. The old hand planes work but there’s a bit of a learning curve.
You can use the table saw (or a router or handplane) if you tack the boards together so the edges you want to join are on the same side and you make a light pass so both edges are cut at the same time which will automatically line them up for gluing.
A router can do double duty as an edge jointer for thinner stock. You just need a long straight edge to reference against.
Depending on where you are getting the wood if it is reasonable quality it may not need much smoothing. It was suggested to me once that a few bits of fir etc on the edge may help adhesion - though you obviously don’t want too much. If you can select the boards look for good straight boards without twist. Can save a lot of work.
Those are jack planes; while probably the most used bench plane, their soles are too short for this job. The proper tool for jointing is the longer soled #7 or a #8 .
