Jet Jointer Calibration

Alex_P

New User
Alex
First time poster... Happy to have found this community!

I’m looking for someone in the North Charlotte area that can do a service call to get my Jointer properly calibrated. I’ve tried running the adjustment instructions multiple times and reviewed a lot of different articles about it. After several failed attempts and only accomplishing making it worse, I really need to find someone who knows what they are doing :cool:

Are there service companies out there for this kind of thing?

Thanks!
Alex
 

ScottM

Scott
Staff member
Corporate Member
Welcome to the forum. Lots of wood workers in your area. I am sure one will offer a hand.
 

bob vaughan

Bob Vaughan
Senior User
Are there service companies out there for this kind of thing?

I used to do that kind of thing for school shops, industry, and a few home shops in the local Roanoke area. I retired a few years back. At $75.00/hr including travel, it got expensive for the average home shop and I wouldn't pull my service van out of the driveway for less.
 

Mike Davis

Mike
Corporate Member
And I thought my $25 per hour was too much for home hobby shops.

Well, it must be because most of the time when I give that price I don’t get any reply.
 

bob vaughan

Bob Vaughan
Senior User
With jointers, its usually little more than setting the knives with a dial indicator, about a 1/2 hour job for an 8" jointer once you saddle up to the machine.
Sometimes there are other factors like bearings, loose bearing blocks, etc. that require replacement. An unseen crack in a casting can raise havoc in trying to get things adjusted. There have been times when it was simply a new operator that needed instructions on how to get a straight edge on a jointer and what not to expect from a jointer.

As a field repairman I pretty much have to be able to successfully deal with whatever problem I'm tasked to solve and do so mostly by myself in the customer's shop. The large majority of my work consisted of setting planer and jointer knives. A more recent example is that I travel 1 hour to the shop, 2-1/2 hours setting knives in a 20" planer, an 18" planer, and an 8" jointer, then travel one hour back home.

When I retired, it was nice not having to pay liability insurance, not keeping a commercial vehicle, and not spending seemingly endless hours of non-productive time doing clerical work.


Some pictures below that I'd taken in the field since we all like pictures.


1 repairs 1 - 1.jpg

I had to take the table out of this 20" Delta planer to do some repairs on the raise/lower screws. I did have some guys help
muscle the table back in.

1 repairs 1 - 2.jpg

I had to take the cutterhead out of this machine and then raise the bed off the screws to repair the threads in the bed so it would
raise and lower again.

1 repairs 1 - 3.jpg

This planer was a mess. I had to bore and bush several parts plus take the cutterhead out and install new bearings.

1 repairs 2 - 1.jpg

This little 6" jointer required I make and install a new part for the raise/lower mechanism because that part was way backordered.

1 repairs 2 - 2.jpg
 

Oka

Casey
Corporate Member
@Mike Davis These days 75hr is pretty much a good rate for the lower end cost. Most people are in the 90-120 ......... and to think I started at 1.35/ hr and 2 months later it went up to 1.65/hr .......... times change
 

Alex_P

New User
Alex
Bob you definitely fit the bill for ’knowing what they’re doing’. Too bad you’re 3hrs away, I could buy another jointer for that trip charge!

It’s entirely possible I am clueless when it comes to this piece of equipment. I know a jointer is limited a flat side and a square edge. If I take a relatively square 2x4 to it, the first part of the board has more material taken off than the latter part of the board. Makes a trapezoid...

I ran a section of 2x4 through a few times to exaggerate the problem I am seeing. The arrow is the direction it was fed through... the bottom is the surface that was run through 6x times :

CAFC6833-EF2B-4F1D-ADC6-F5730DD01692.jpeg



Note the 3/16“ difference over this span of ~15”! I figure my inbound and outbound tables are not parallel, but can’t figure out how to make them so. Any insights would be most welcome.
 

mquan01

Mike
Corporate Member
Lay a 4 foot level across the bed and see where you have high and low spots. Adjust from tere
 

bob vaughan

Bob Vaughan
Senior User
Your jointer seems to be working fine. It is not a thickness planer and never was. That tapered cut is what will always happen to some degree or another. True, it can be minimized by varying how much above the outfeed table the arc of the knives are, but that's in terms of .001". Feed speed, downward pressure, and species of wood all come into the mix.

I learned this the hard way with my first box-bed Sears 6" jointer in the early 1970s. I'd "resaw" wood on my Sears 12" band saw and them dress off the washboard. The resulting stock thickness was anything but consistent. I built several of my first projects doing that, but it sure was a pain to work around. Eventually I got a thickness planer and my thickness problems went away.

Below is a writing desk (scan of a photo) I built without a thickness planer. The little drawer sides are observably not consistent thickness as are some of the other components. While the differences aren't too observable on the face of the piece, they're there. This piece motivated me to get a thickness planer.

1 writing desk - 1.jpg
 

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