Gave myself a New Year present...

[John Grossbohlin]

I took the time today to sharpen the knives on my DJ-20 jointer... They've needed it for quite a while but I never seemed to have time to do that and use it so using it took priority! I put a drop of Liquid Wrench on each of the lock screws and let it soak a few minutes... whether it needed it or not I figured it was a good tactical move. It all came apart easily and I cleaned everything with lacquer thinner and then Breakfree.

I've got a Makita blade sharpener (horizontal water grinder with jigs) so I sharpened the knives myself. Perhaps I went too far, but after using the course and fine wheels on the grinder I used my large black Arkansas stone to take the wire edge off... Reinstallation went fine until I dropped the Allen wrench for the jack screw and it went inside the jointer... and didn't fall out the dust shoot. I finally knocked it out with a long piece of drill rod. It appears that there was just enough wood dust built up inside that the Allen wrench stuck. Oh well... once I had the wrench back in my hands the rest of the installation and adjustment went fine.

One last check of everything and it was time to test the jointer. I ran the jointer without the dust collector and everything seemed fine so I set the depth of cut to about 1/8" and turned on the dust collector. Then I grabbed a piece of hard maple with a rough cut edge. I ran the edge over the jointer and it didn't sound like it was cutting. What the Hell?! I couldn't imagine how I could have fouled up the reinstallation... I looked at the machine and it all looked OK. Lastly I looked at the edge of the board and it was smooth, straight and had no snip! It seems that the knives were so dull before that the sound it made had become "normal" and not hearing the cutting over the dust collector threw me! LOL

I made a face joint on the maple board too (about 6" wide with wild grain) and again the cut was quiet. The face was also smooth and flat with no snip...

Next is the thickness planer!

Happy New Year to me!

John

[Gramps' shop]

Hey, John ... My jointer and planer are jealous. I've got both tasks ahead of me and you've inspired me to get it done in the next month or so. I have beer in the fridge if your in my neighborhood and want to supervise.

Larry

[Sonny]

Yep, the tell-tale sign of dull blades. When my knives sound too loud, th en I know they are dulling. Table saw blades make noise, also, when they g et dull.

Also, when I get a nick in the jointer and planer blades, and the rest of t he blade is still sharp, I loosen each blade and move it one way or the oth er, just a tad, so that the nick on each blade is not aligned with the othe r nicks. This way, the typical raised bead, of the nick-cutting, is elimin ated from the surface of the board. I can joint or plane a little more, be fore sharpening.

Sonny

[John Grossbohlin]

It's one of those tasks that is easy to avoid... not sure if beer is a good motivational lube or not as I see it being a hindrance to accuracy and keeping things blood free. ;~)

I'd probably do the major machine sharpening more often if I had extra knives and sent them out to be sharpened... R&R is pretty straight forward but setting up the blade sharpener and doing it to my satisfaction is time consuming. That said, I've not had good luck with the locally available sharpening services--I use Forrest for my circular saw blades.

A few examples of what I experienced before I bought all my own sharpening equipment: In one case it was clear that the item had been ground but it was also clear that the actual edge wasn't touched as it was still dull and shiny from use. In another case there were huge burrs on the edge and deep grinder marks... it was clear that a very coarse grinder was used with no finishing work. When I bought my latest lawn mower they made a big deal out of their free annual blade sharpening service. I figured that I would try it out as I had no fixtures that were suitable. It turns out that neither did they. When I got the blade back it was clear is was done free hand on a grinder as it had a nice radius, instead of clearance, ground into the blade.

The bottom line is the jobs looked like the local services didn't care about the quality of their work and in the case of the mower blade they didn't even understand the concept of a properly sharpened blade. I'll note again that Forrest has been the exception though that is a mail order experience...

John

[woodchucker]

I brought my planer blades to Forrest while I had my wwii in for service too.

I had machine marks on the planer knives and doubted they were sharp because of it. Well they were absolutely sharp.. Unbelievably sharp... Well worth the price. And I did have a spare, but it did not take long for service about 5 days + 2 for shipping back.

As for jointer knives, I did them by hand recently as I have a 6".. that is no big deal because of the size. Just did them on wet dry sandpaper on a granite block if I remember... What a diff after, much less force needed to push the wood through.

[John Grossbohlin]

If the machine marks were in the clearance area it's not a problem. When they are all the way out to the cutting edge there is no way to have a great edge... it's like not polishing the back of your chisels or plane irons!

The thought of trying to do that with my 8" knives, while grinding clearance into them and getting rid of the nicks, amounts to torture... it would takes days! ;~) I can see doing a touch up of non-nicked knives that way but I'd not want to do a full sharpening!

John

[woodchucker]

I would normally agree, but they are way sharp.. I'll see if I can get a pic of what they look like, since I haven't mounted them... I have my swing set in there now.

Totally agree, that's why the planer knives went out as they were nicked, and just too much metal to take down.

[Jeff Mazur]

I've a jointer story of a slightly different type. I was seeing snipe at t he tail end of my jointer cuts and so I set myself to the task of recheckin g my blade height relative to outfeed table on my old Craftsman 6" jointer. I checked and tightened all three blades, even turned the spindle around a couple more times to double-check that I had tightened all. Satisfied, I pulled the wedge that was holding open the pork-chop, plugged it in, and f ired it up. In about a second I heard a loud bang and the sound of the mot or frozen (humming not turning) and cut the power. Somehow a blade had thr own loose, sliced into the edge of the infeed table and breaking off a piec e, and cracking the outfeed table from the underside.

I was shaken, to say the least, and truly grateful for that pork-chop. My jointer is toast, but I'm OK. I've disassembled everything now, and still have no definitive idea as to what happened, but in hindsight I suspect tha t perhaps I inadvertently reversed the wedge that holds the blade in place (I recall that it will fit in both ways even though it's not symmetrical in its design, it has a "right way" and 'wrong way" to go in), which I think would allow tightening down the wedge without it adequately securing the bl ade. I can't think of anything else that could have gone wrong as I was me ticulous about checking and rechecking the adjustment and all tightener scr ews.

The silver lining is that I got a really good price on a Powermatic 54A, th at compared to my old machine is whisper quiet and smooth as silk, with a M UCH longer table length (66").

Happy New Year all!

[Lew Hodgett]

I've a jointer story of a slightly different type. I was seeing snipe at the tail end of my jointer cuts and so I set myself to the task of rechecking my blade height relative to outfeed table on my old Craftsman 6" jointer. I checked and tightened all three blades, even turned the spindle around a couple more times to double-check that I had tightened all. Satisfied, I pulled the wedge that was holding open the pork-chop, plugged it in, and fired it up. In about a second I heard a loud bang and the sound of the motor frozen (humming not turning) and cut the power. Somehow a blade had thrown loose, sliced into the edge of the infeed table and breaking off a piece, and cracking the outfeed table from the underside.

I was shaken, to say the least, and truly grateful for that pork-chop. My jointer is toast, but I'm OK.

--------------------------------------------------------- I'm reminded of former boss of mine who kept a piston with a broken skirt from his Porsche on his desk.

When I asked why he kept that broken piston, he told me it was to remind him to double check his assembly work as he had some how forgotten to install a wrist pin keeper during the rebuild which allowed the wrist pin to slide over and score the piston cylinder wall as well as crack the piston skirt.

It was an expensive lesson.

Lew

[John Grossbohlin]

Geez... makes me feel justified in triple checking everything!

The lock bars on my jointer have threaded holes into which the lock screws go rather than a separate lock bar and screws with nuts. As such they can only be reasonably inserted in one direction. The jacks sit in their own little cavities and are held captive by the knives. It seems to be a well thought out design whereas I've worked on other jointers where the lock bars and screws were separate and the lock bar could be inserted in any of four ways... three of them wrong. Loose springs with pawls instead of jack screws made it interesting to get everything in there correctly.

snip

I've heard of people torching their car or dropping their laptop so they could get new ones, but hurly sharpened hardened steel around at high velocity is something then again! ;~)

John

...heading to the shop to take conduct one more snug test! ;~)

[Jeff Mazur]

LOL!!! I KNEW I would see at least one post ribbing me about that - have to admit that as I was writing my reply it reminded me of that laptop commercial where the guy tosses coffee on his computer to get a new one.

I'm pretty fortunate in that my wife doesn't try to dictate what I can and can't buy for the shop - she trusts me to exercise good judgment, so I'll never have to resort to such a stunt. It was just plain stupidity (not stupidity and deviousness :)

[John Grossbohlin]

So you are NOT part of the crowd here that fears death less than your wife selling all your stuff for what you told her you paid for it? ;~)

John

BTW, all the pressure bars were good and tight when I rechecked them!

[Jeff Mazur]

Good job, keep double and triple checking, it's much easier to post articles to the NG with all your fingers and both eyes :)

Yes, absolutely nothing to fear from wife, hell, she likes the idea of me building stuff for her.

Jeff

[krw]

My wife doesn't really care (much) what I spend on such things. She's kinda dragging feet a little on my next pistol and the Laguna but we jumped the gun on two cars last year and it'll be April until our house in AL closes (being rented to the buyers for a year). I don't want to push things while we have two car payments and two mortgages. ;-)

Yes, if one is responsible they don't worry too much about such things. However, (wrt laptops) bosses often don't see things the same way. ;-)