SECTION 3
up and down while the motor and bit move into the work. Routing machines like the Multirouter can also bore out mortises, and they have a great deal of versatility. They can do angled work and can cut tenons. Their ability to move in three directions makes them suitable for a variety of mortising operations. The horizontal table holds the work and moves side to side and in and out. The router is mounted in the vertical table and moves up and down. Any horizontal machine needs to move smoothly in its major axes and have no wobble or slop in its tables. Also check to see there’s no flex in the table when you put on a long or heavy board. The hollow-chisel mortiser is designed specifically for mortising. Only with significant modification can it do any other drilling job. It requires finely tuned and sharpened bits, but the superior leverage in its gearing gets the square mortising done. The heavier the hollow-chisel mortiser, the better.
Because of the x-y-z movement of their tables, horizontal routing machines have the flexibility to cut not only mortises but tenons and other joints.
30
Machines
Edge Tools Edge tools are all designed primarily for other tasks. But on occasion they can do some joinery work. The jointer flattens an edge or a face of a board. It will not do this parallel to any other edge or face, as its cutterhead is in line with its reference surface. Make sure the cutterhead knives line up perfectly with the outfeed table of the jointer at top dead center. If the knives are set too high to that table, you will experience snipe at the end of the board when the board comes off the infeed table and drops into the knives. If you’re getting a taper cut, your knives are set too low to the outfeed table. They stop cutting as the board moves along its pass, gradually lifting itself off the knives. You can use the jointer for rabbet cuts along the long-grain edge of a board or to joint edges for gluing. The planer cuts the face of a board flat and parallel to another face. Its cutterhead is set parallel to the reference surface, its table. For the best results, you must first flatten
The jointer is used for straightening the edges of boards before gluing.