Re: Fingers, and Power Jointers
William Duffield, on the Cohansey
>Lots of us here use these monsters, and this tip wouldn't make sense to someone who is not familiar with hand tools, so it goes here, and here it goes:
Always use a pusher when feeding wood through a power jointer. The best design looks like an old wooden tryplane, with a knob on the front and a tote on the back. Power tool guys who don't understand "tryplane" might call it a "boat", because the nose and tail are often rounded to facilitate pushing the cutter guard out of the way and closing it again, quietly. It has no blade, etc., of course, instead, the pushing is done by a half inch square wooden stop block set into a dado about a half inch wide and about a quarter inch deep, across the bottom of the sole about a half inch from the back end. Use CA, or liquid hide glue or something that will release when persuaded, after the stop block pays for the mistake. Don't use screws, because you don't want the jointer blades to pay for the mistake, either.
Don't make the body from beech or purpleheart -- use something lightweight, like white cedar, redwood or catalpa. My pusher always rests right behind the infeed side of the jointer fence, where I'm not tempted to forget to use it.
The only time I don't use the pusher is when I'm edge jointing a board wider than the height of the fence. If you are edge jointing narrow, thin stock, then make another, very narrow pusher with a wooden fence tacked to the side. If you want to get fancy, you could make it adjustable, like a plow plane fence. I don't power joint stock that would require one of these, because I find that's always easier to do with a hand plane.
Hand tool content: There's another use for the boat. If you like to surface thin, short stock with your #7 or #8 clamped blade-up in your front vise, you can use it to push the stock over these jointers too. It might not save fingers, but it'll save fingerprints.