Setting Jointer Knives

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rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
My jointer finally need to have the blades sharpened so I did that but I'm not getting the blades back in as accurately as I would like. Does anyone have any experience with the Jointer Pal? I've got a mag base and dial indicator that I can use but I'm struggling holding the blade in place. Are they worth the money? Does anyone in the Charlotte area(concord, huntersville, etc) have one I could borrow for a few hours?
 
J

junquecol

Bruce
Senior User
John White's book "Care and Repair of Shop Machines" has a section on setting jointer knives, He uses a shop made magnetic jig to set knives. Bob Vaughn has a video on setting knives using DI. I set mine with shop made jig and check with DI.
 
rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
junquecol said:
John White's book "Care and Repair of Shop Machines" has a section on setting jointer knives, He uses a shop made magnetic jig to set knives. Bob Vaughn has a video on setting knives using DI. I set mine with shop made jig and check with DI.
Click to expand...

I had just found John White's shop made jig when you posted this. How funny. Guess I'll make a set of those. I've got the magnets already I've got some MDF that I can use to glue the magnets to. I'll have to see if that will work. Kind of stinks because I am dead in the middle of a project... Oh well. Guess I'll be working on this over this week. :)
 
rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
Well I made a set of the John White jigs but I'm not doing something right. I'm getting a ton of snipe and when the infeed table is set to 0 I'm still cutting the wood, on the positive side I sharpened my blades pretty well. Guess I'll need to work on it some more and see if I can get that snipe out of there. that will be annoying to have to work around.
 
Bill Clemmons

Bill Clemmons

Bill
Corporate Member
Kevin, I use a shop made magnetic jig, similar to the John White version. It works pretty well for me. The key is locking the cylinder at exactly Top Dead Center (TDC) for each knife. If you're off even slightly, then each knife will be at a different height, causing snipe.

Once you find TDC, use a wedge to lock the cylinder in place. Then change the knife. There are probably other ways to lock the cylinder, but this has worked best for me.

Bill
 
rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
Bill Clemmons said:
Kevin, I use a shop made magnetic jig, similar to the John White version. It works pretty well for me. The key is locking the cylinder at exactly Top Dead Center (TDC) for each knife. If you're off even slightly, then each knife will be at a different height, causing snipe.

Once you find TDC, use a wedge to lock the cylinder in place. Then change the knife. There are probably other ways to lock the cylinder, but this has worked best for me.

Bill
Click to expand...

Thanks Bill. I was looking at some stuff this morning and that's exactly what I forgot to do is find top dead center. I'm unlocking this mystery that is a jointer. :) My planer is cake with the knife setting guage. I'll give her another go tonight after working on finding TDC. The nice thing to know is the blades are sharp. I couldn't get them as sharp as I can my hand plane irons but I wonder if that is possible with the way the blade is. I didn't put a micro-bevel on them not sure if that would help or not. I did it all free hand and I've got to say I'm pretty happy with them the way they are if I can just get rid of the snipe. If I can figure this out I'll have to get dad's tuned up. :)
 
Tarhead

Tarhead

Mark
Corporate Member
There was a great tip a few months back on using a piece of glass with a couple of super strong magnets glued to the top surface of the glass of one edge of the glass. The magnets hold the blade in firm position against the bottom of the glass while you tighten.
 
rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
Tarhead said:
There was a great tip a few months back on using a piece of glass with a couple of super strong magnets glued to the top surface of the glass of one edge of the glass. The magnets hold the blade in firm position against the bottom of the glass while you tighten.
Click to expand...

That's a pretty slick idea as well. I think i have some glass around the shop that I could try it with it might be to big though, time to break out the glass cutter. :)
 
eyekode

eyekode

New User
Salem
There is a difference between snipe and scalloping. If you run stock quickly and get a wavy surface then he blades are not all at the same height. If most of the stock is good and only the last couple inches were cut deeper then you have snipe and the problem is the outfeed is too low.
Salem
 
rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
eyekode said:
There is a difference between snipe and scalloping. If you run stock quickly and get a wavy surface then he blades are not all at the same height. If most of the stock is good and only the last couple inches were cut deeper then you have snipe and the problem is the outfeed is too low.
Salem
Click to expand...

Salem you make an excellent point. The board is smooth up until the last .5" - 1.0" of the board and it just carves out a nice little chunk. The rest of the board is really nice. Better than it has been in a while. I'll adjust the out feed table up a little bit and see if that helps. It's entirely possible that this thing wasn't set up properly when I got it and I haven't really messed with it since I was getting pretty good cuts.
 
bluedawg76

bluedawg76

New User
Sam
Here was my jig. I used some glass from the borg. here's the link to my original post describing all the particulars. It was amazingly simple with this jig which consists of some rare earth magnets and some 3/32" thick glass. From the woes I've heard from others changing/ resetting knives, this jig makes easy work of it.
One thing I did different than others is that: After you locate TDC w/ a dial indicator mounted on a magnetic base relative to the outfeed table. I then slide the dial indicator back to a positiion that registers ~0.002" below the cutter head. Now rotate the cutterhead so that the knives are directly positioned at this spot. You can mark it on the fence, but it's just as easy to find again with the dial indicator. Using a jig like mine below, set the knives precisely flush with the outfeed table. Repeat for the other knives. Now, as your knives are rotated to TDC, they should be set at 0.002" above the outfeed table. I found this far simpler than adjusting the outfeed table up and down as described by Mr. White, who admittedly so, is far more knowledgeable in this area than myself.

http://ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?t=39481

IMG_2523.jpg

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bluedawg76

bluedawg76

New User
Sam
and i should also add they i needed 2 sets of 6 rare earth magnets to hold the knives, and 2 sets of 4 to hold the glass snug to the jointer table. The magnets were fairly small, but also cheap i.e from HF.
 
rcflyer23

rcflyer23

Kevin
Corporate Member
Hot dawg she is working great. When I raised the infeed to 0 and compared to the out feed the out feed was visibly low. :BangHead: I set a straight edge over it and brought them level ran a piece at zero and nothing was cut. I dropped the infeed table and got a beautiful cut. VERY VERY Smooth.

Thanks for all the help. Now I have some confidence in setting this jointer up again when I need to sharpen the blades again. I like knowing how to sharpen my tools. I'm learning and thats tons of fun.. One of these days I'll figure out how to sharpen a hand saw. :gar-Bi
 
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