Jointer problem (and possible small gloat)

A couple weeks ago I was given an old Craftsman 6" jointer by an older man in our church. It isn't a DJ-20, but it's a heck of a lot better than what I can do with a hand plane. I set about trying to get this thing into good working shape, first discovering that the blades had evidently been sharpened on a grinder and had about a 1/4" dip end to end, so were essentially useless. They were also seriously blued, so I question their temper. Decided it was easy to just get replacements, so did that. While waiting for the new blades to arrive I went out this morning to try to clean up the tables a bit. It looks like it had picked up some rust at one point and he had removed it with a circular sander (not ROS, just a spinny disk thingy). The outfeed table isn't too bad - mostly flat and cleaning up good, but the infeed is a bit problematic.

First, it has some unevenness ground into it from the sanding, probably 6-8 thou. That is probably small enough that I'm not going to try to sand them out - they are only in spots and the basic bed is mainly flat.

Second, and this is the thing that really concerns me, the infeed table isn't parallel with the outfeed *side-to-side*. Along the length it seems to be perfectly parallel, but if I make one edge even with the outfeed the other edge is about 1/16" low. I haven't tried tearing the whole thing apart to see if I can shim anything, since that will take a lot of work, but I wondered if this discrepancy on the infeed is really worth worrying about as long as the outfeed and fence are good.

Ah, heck. After reading all that I'm going to tear it apart and see how I can shim that thing level - there has to be a way somehow. If I can make this work I'll consider it a gloat. If I spend money on blades and time messing with it and it still doesn't work right I guess it'll just be an anti-gloat.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

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Tim Douglass
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If it's the same 6" jointer I used to have, you're doomed. I could do one of two things with the infeed table. I could adjust it pretty nearly coplanar with the outfeed table (which is fixed and part of the main body) or I could adjust the infeed table so it would move up and down with the hand wheel. I could not do both. I even got a new infeed table from Sears.

I tried shimming. I looked at it time and again trying to reengineer it. I had it apart more times than you can count, but the only way I ever got anything done successfully was when I replaced it with a DJ15...which is for sale, by the way, and only because I now have a DJ20.

Reply to
LRod

I inherited a 6" jointer in similar condition. after spending way more than it was worth in time and machinist's services making it cut more or less straight I sold it to my stepbrother for $100 and bought a used 8" rockwell for $600 that was more or less ready to go.

Reply to
bridger

Just a note about the knives. If you are buying them from Sears, be very careful. I had a major problem some months ago (google jo4hn and jointer for documentation) where replacement knives differed in width from one end to the other by .008". This was enough to allow the knives to come out of cutter head and take a piece out of the infeed table. Happily no harm was done to yr hmbl srvnt. mahalo, jo4hn

Reply to
jo4hn

Freud knives through Amazon tool crib. Cheaper than Sears and I didn't have to deal with those guys.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

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Tim Douglass

I've got it off the rather iffy home-built stand it was on and can see that there are what look like 4 adjustment points (bolts with what look like lock nuts on them) for the infeed table. Maybe I've gotten lucky and I can actually just adjust it to be level.

Some day. But for right now this little gift opens up the possibility of getting a planer and finally getting away from buying S4S.

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

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Reply to
Tim Douglass

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