Sammy,

An additional step you can do to insure that the two edge joints you're
gluing together match perfectly is to:

1. Layout your boards on your bench and put them in the best looking
orientation to make the top.
2. Using chalk or pencil (lightly) mark the boards with a big V that goes
across all boards. This marks the top face of each board and they can be
easily placed back in the same order after jointing and keeping them in
order for glue-up.
3. Be sure your jointer fence is perpendicular to the outfeed table.
Perfection is nice but if your fence is off a bit due to warp, twist etc.
don't be to concerned because the error will be cancelled out.
4. Take the first outside board of your top and place the working face
(marked face) against the fence and joint the glue edge. I like to run a
pencil line down the entire length of the board so after I joint it, the
pencil line is totally gone verifying there are no low spots. I have my
jointer set to take a .015" (15 thou) deep cut.

In a perfect world, the edge you just jointed would be at 90deg to the
working face - assuming your fence and technique were perfect too. They're
probably not perfect so...

5. Take the next board in line and joint the edge that will mate to the
first board by having that edge pointing down (obviously) and the working
face (marked face) away from the jointer face. When you joint this edge, it
will be the complement and any error from 90 deg on the first edge joint
will be cancelled by the opposite amount of error on the second boards edge.

If that doesn't make any sense, make up small practice table top using some
scraps and practice and then the light will come on providing I didn't screw
up my instructions above. Doing it becomes intuitive after awhile, writing
it down makes you think - did I say that correctly? If I didn't, thousands
will chime in and let you know.

As for gluing the boards, the technique I find that works nicely for me is
to spread glue on one edge on one board, then slip the next edge up to it
and then slide the boards back and forth on their edges to spread the glue
evenly. This tends to help me from applying to much glue by not applying
glue to both edges and gives me extra open time to insure board alignment.
Agway's do a dry run first and go thru all the motions of glue-up but not
using any glue. Have your clamps ready, culls and whatever else you may use
to keep boards aligned.

Bob S.

"Sammy" wrote in message
. net...
I am making a chest with a top made of solid walnut glued on edge. Can't
recall, so I'm asking:

Do I run the second edge through the jointer after cutting, or is the
table
saw edge good enough?