I am having trouble with my 6-in. jointer. Every board I edge-joint ends up tapered. I have adjusted the outfeed table, checked the gibs and locking nuts, and even tried taking a very light (1/32-in.) cut. Nothing I do gets rid of the taper. Do you have any suggestions on the cause and solution?
—Tony Granelli, Idlewild, MI
ANSWER:
Before you blame the machine, check your technique. First, try transferring pressure to the outfeed side of the workpiece as soon as possible. Keeping pressure on the infeed side will cause tapering.
If aligning the outfeed table doesn’t get rid of the taper, check that the infeed and outfeed tables are coplanar. Raise the infeed table to full height, move the cutterhead so that no knife is above the tabletop, and lay a 4-ft. straightedge along the infeed and outfeed tables. If the tables aren’t in the same plane, you’ll have to shim the ways to fix the problem.If that doesn’t work, check that your outfeed table is set slightly below the highest point of the knives’ arc. Align the cutterhead so that one blade is at its high point and lay a straightedge across the knife and table. There should be a gap no greater than the thickness of a sheet of photocopier paper between the straightedge and outfeed table just after the cutterhead.
Drawing by Vince Babak
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If you have a helical cutter head machine, having learned from bitter experience, the bearing seats may be uneven. This can be compensated for in knife cutter heads because the adjustment of the knives can make up for a lack of parallelism of the cutter head axis to the outfeed table
Shim the cutter head under the low side - not too difficult. this is far easier than shimming the outfield table and then doing the same for the indeed table. Fix one thing versus fixing multiples.
It wasn't easy to learn but it taught me a lot about the machine
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Comments
If you have a helical cutter head machine, having learned from bitter experience, the bearing seats may be uneven. This can be compensated for in knife cutter heads because the adjustment of the knives can make up for a lack of parallelism of the cutter head axis to the outfeed table
Shim the cutter head under the low side - not too difficult. this is far easier than shimming the outfield table and then doing the same for the indeed table. Fix one thing versus fixing multiples.
It wasn't easy to learn but it taught me a lot about the machine
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