Brian G wrote:

"(having said that, if you by PAR prepared boards, then it ought to be
square and flat enough for edge jointing anyway)"

That little sentence must have my old apprentice master 'spinning in his
grave' and I won't repeat his reply and actions when, as a first year
apprentice, I asked him "why can't you this f***ing job on the planer" -
after spending nearly a week 'shooting' and jointing boards on his
instructions (ouch was my only reply). :-)

While I don't argue with the concept that a machine planed board will
have some ripple on the surface (which is often easy enough to see[1])
and hence offer a less perfect gluing surface, it would be interesting
to see exactly how much difference in bond strength you get when
compared to a manually finished flat edge joint. With modern adhesives
its seems quite common for the glue line to out perform the material
anyway.

[1] Having said that my thicknesser (which runs its cutter block at 20k
cuts / min) does leave a surface so flat that I can't actually see any
ripple in it.

These are my last words now on stairs and 'shooting'

Last time I wanted to use stairs and shooting in the same sentence was
when I realised my architect could not count, and had specified 12 steps
(and set rise and going appropriately), but drawn 13!

--
Cheers,

John.

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