Bought me a Wen bench top jointer after reading and watching a lot of reviews. Seemed to be really good for the price.

Been messing with it and for short boards don't seem to have any issues at all….however I was trying to joint some 4 foot long 1x8s and also some 2x4s (same length) and man am I having some issues!

Can't seem to get a good flat face on any board and I'm assuming it's user error.

I've already taken several levels to measure the cutters are just barely touching the levels from the out feed table so I know that's not it.

Any pointers from anyone here? Frustrated as hell that for whatever reason I can't face joint a 4 foot board and if I can't do that there's no point in owning the thing….

Do you have a track saw?

No. But I'm talking about face jointing

I don't have a jointer but jointed 10'+ boards together perfectly with a track saw.

If you don't have one, nevermind.

Seems like there are a lot of woodworking guys on the Outdoors board. I would suggest cross posting there.

There are others with more experience, but I'll add my two cents.

I think it depends on what you're trying to do, but I'm guessing you're dealing with a twist. I do way more edge jointing than face jointing, and with twists my technique doesn't work as well on faces. This video describes the issue and makes a suggestion on a technique that helps manage a twist on face jointing.



Personally, I just find a planer sled to be more effective for face jointing, especially longer boards. I just don't think jointers are effective for anything of any length (especially bench-top models), but they're great for furniture parts, which tend to be shorter.



There are a lot of opinions out there and ways to tackle it.

For a bench top, going past 3 feet is difficult. I agree as said above for budget jointing use a sled on a table saw for the edge and planer for the face.

Appreciate all the responses!

That first video Ben posted is probably the best one I've seen in showing how bad a twist can mess things up and I've never seen that technique before but clearly it works.

And I can definitely tell how trying to joint long boards on a bench top would be tough now…..I was trying to joint a 4 foot 1x8 and making myself nuts….

So yeah looks like I'm gonna make me a simple jig for the planar and face joint using that…..which by the way I decided to go cheap on the jointer…..but I did NOT on the planar and got the high end dewalt planar…..

which I've used and holy crap it's awesome….so awesome I've needed to a few custom pieces to turn my metal trash can into a dust collector for it because you can't use a regular dust vac because of how hard it blows the dang chips out…..

Could always pick up an #5 hand plane and learn some basic planing techniques to fatten the ends and then run the whole board through the jointer.