Hello, I'm close to loosing all patience with my 6 1/8" jointer/planer and hoping for some advice. It's a Craftsman bench top model and my history with sears woodworking tools leaves me to first suspect the machine. Let me get to the problem first.
All boards I plane (and I have only worked with 4S softwood pine) will produce a flat face, but this flat face is always deeper on one end than the other. Thus, I start with two sides something close to 90deg and working on edge 1 starts moving the two sides closer to 80deg. If I try to correct the problem by on edge two I get even closer to 70deg. Obviously one side of the blades/plates/something is lower/higher than the other but I can't figure it out. My straight edges aren't as reliable as I'd like so I tried a 1-2-3 block on the out feed with feeler guages on the infeed to check for differences along the length. Might I mention I can't get the infeed to the same level as the outfeed so this is the only way to check for coplanar tables as well. The feeler guage didn't seem to show any difference between the two in terms of height but I don't feel as confident as I might if I could compare the two on a granite surface out in space to make sure that everything is truly level to 0.0000000001+- inches. Do you see how nuts this is making me?
I would like to think the problem rests in my technique and I've read the book on technique. I understand snipe (not a problem with me at this point), I get the concept of planing an edge, then a face then surface planing opposite face then finishing edge on the joiner. I get the hand over hand, weight transfer from outfeed to infeed idea. I've read, get and tried it all and still get these boards that close in from 90 to 0 degrees. Last night I jointed 1 inch off a board, worked until 1:08AM adjusting the blades (lost the allen wrench between the roller/infeed, took apart the entire machine, rebuilt it, readjusted blades), felt confident I was getting a flat face/90deg cut, tried it this morning and same thing.
Help!