: If you are goingto plane them down , I wonder if doing the scarf first would
: result in a uniform thickness after planeing. I've been using butt joints
: with square edges but the next boat is going to be scarf joint with
: bead&cove.

: Greg

Greg,

I think there are two different issues here, depending on how you go about doing the scarfs.

You are going to get a certain amount of excess glue oozing from these joints, and perhaps a bit of misalignment.

When you scarf individual strips then it is probably a good idea to work with strips that are a bit thick, and run the double length strip through a surface planer to clean up the area around the scarf joint, and bring the entire strip down to the proper thickness.

I prefer to scarf the boards that I will cut my strips from. I make a 2 foot long taper at the end of my boards, usually with a hand held circular saw that I guide along a straightedge. I can touch up the cut with a few fast swipes from a plane if there are any grossly bad areas, but usually I don't need to bother. It is such a large joint that it is rather simple to line up and clamp.

After the glue has set up, my first pass through the rip saw removes any jagged edges from misaligned parts, as well as the excess glue. I suppose I could put the board through a jointer/planer to give me a nice straight edge to work from, but I don't usually have that set up.

After that I just cut strips. Every one that comes off of these double-length boards has two perfect faces. Or at least they are just as perfect as any other spot on the rest of the strip. There may be a bit of glue on the sides of the strips, unless I sand it off before I rip the strips.

Working from boards I had ripped from a beam, I think I would make the rough boards first, scarph them, then plane the boards to 3/4 inch, or what ever I wanted my strips to be. Then I would rip the strips from these long smooth boards and plane them to 1/4 or 3/16.

If I either had no surface planer, or wanted to do a bead and cove edge with a router or shaper, then I might skip planing the boards after scarfing them, as the rough edges (along the entire strip, not just at the joint) would be removed by the bead and cove bits.

Hope this clarifies things.

PGJ