Building a Jointer - Part 2

7/31/2019 Building a Jointer - Part 2

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Continued from part 1

Up to this point in the construction, I had beenmoving the infeed table mechanism by hand andusing a clamp to then hold it in place, but I finallyadded a height adjustment crank.

The crank is attached to a piece of 3/8" threadedrod, which goes through a large washer attachedto the outside case with four drywall screws. Twosmall washers behind the crank allow it to turnsmoothly against the large washer. On the otherside, a spacer, spring, and two nuts locked to eachother push against the washer. I hadn't planned onthe spacer, but without it, the nuts would haveended up inside the piece of enclosure, and Iwouldn't have been able to get a wrench aroundthem.

The other end of the threaded rod goes through anut mounted in a block of wood. The nut is justpressed into a hole slightly too small for the nut - Isquished it in there with a vise. That block is

attached to a piece of plywood that is screwed tothe bottom of the links.

The mechanism works pretty smoothly, although ittakes about ten turns to lower the table by twomillimeters.

I never used the blade guard on my 6" jointer, but Ifigured for this jointer, a guard would be a goodidea. I wasn't so much afraid that I'd get my handsin the cutter head as I was afraid of the cutterhead, or some part of it, somehow jumping out of


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the jointer and coming flying at me. After all, this isan unproven machine.

I cut out a piece of paper to figure out a shape thatwould work for the guard.

And here's the guard. As soon as I added it on, Irealized that sometimes I need to see the cutbeing made to know how much I am taking off. SoI drilled a series of holes in the guard. Ascrewdriver placed in one of the holes preventsthe guard from closing all the way. That way, I canlock the guard to open a bit wider than my cut.

The corner of the guard has a 3/8" bolt attached toit which serves as the pivot. A wooden disk with a

T-nut in it is screwed tightly onto the end of thebolt. A spring pulling on a string wrapped aroundthat pulley helps to return the guard to closedposition after a cut is made.

I should use a bigger spring, but that small springwas the most suitable one I had lying around, andit seems to do the job.

In the planer, the motor was mounted to pivot onthe shaft (bottom left in the image), with anotherbolt to lock the pivoting for belt tensioning. Iwanted to come up with a mechanism wheretightening a screw would tighten the belt, but in theend, I couldn't think of anything that would fit in theconstrained space, so I just took a piece ofaluminium and cut a slot in it. The motor istensioned by hand, then the bolt tightened to lockthe position. The strip of metal isn't attached toanything, it just pushes against the bottom of theopening.

I made some pieces of wood to fit around the beltfor a guard. The pieces are strips of maple, 1 cm


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thick, joined at the corners with finger joints madewith my screw advance box joint jig . Here are thepieces of the housing screwed to the jointer frame.

I wanted to make a piece of plywood that would fitexactly over this shape. Normally, one would justput the plywood against it and trace around it witha pencil, but if I put a piece of plywood against it,there wouldn't be enough room behind it to tracethe outline. What to do?

Time for another little invention! This is themarking tool I came up with for marking the outlineon the front of the plywood while tracing the shapeat the back. The bottom leg of the wood tracesagainst the outline of the enclosure while thepencil draws on the front.

Here's using that gauge. I was pretty happy with

this trick, but I have to admit, I couldn't think of anyother time such a marking gauge would have beenuseful. Maybe it wasn't such a great invention afterall.

With the outline traced, I cut out the cover,unscrewed the guard parts from the jointer, andglued it all together.

After the glue dried, I flipped it over and drilled thescrew holes in the strips of maple all the waythrough to the front.


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The guard mounted. I had to leave it open at thetop - otherwise, it would hit the guard that swingsover the cutter head. But that's OK. That part isnormally covered by the blade guard.

Here's milling the slot for my fence attachment

bracket.I'm using two of my blue long-reach C clamps asstops on either end, plus the non fingered end of afingerboard to press the workpiece against thefence. I don't feel entirely safe using a router tablelike this, so I wanted to make sure my workpiecewas constrained.

I milled the slot in about five passes of increasingdepth, this photo was taken partway through thelast pass.

Gluing the fence support together.

The fence is a fixed 90 degrees, no bevelcapability. I don't use my jointer for bevel cuts, so Ifigure it's better to have a fence that is always at90 degrees than to have one that can bemisadjusted.

And a nice locking knob. This one's made out oftwo pieces, glued together, with a nut pressed intoone piece. The hole with the nut on it is smaller onthe other side, and gluing the pieces togethermakes a T-shaped knob with the nut captive.


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All along, as soon as I could, I did lots of testing ofthis jointer. Two milk crates and an old drawerserve as a temporary stand.

Shavings were coming out the bottom, but theywere also blown all around the inside of the jointer,and out the outfeed side. I knew I'd have to makesome internal baffles to direct the shavings down,but it sure was odd seeing shavings come flyingout the front. I think the wind from the motor mayhave had something to do with it.

So here's two thin scraps of plywood mountedaround the cutter head to direct the shavingsdown.

I first mounted the knives using the knife settinggauge that came with my thickness planer. Butduring testing, I found that this jointer had a bit of ahowl to it. Not that it mattered much given howloud the brush motor is, but still bothersome. My 6"

jointer has hardly any howl at all. Checking thingsout, I realized the knives on my 6" jointer onlyprotruded by about .030 (.75 mm) out of the cutterhead, whereas on this cutter head, the knivesprotruded by .060 (1.5 mm). I figured a smallerprotrusion would make less noise. There wouldalso be less danger of kickback with a smalleramount of protrusion. So I decided to set theknives deeper. The photo at left shows how I set

the knives, vs the height that the setting gauge would set them at.


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I couldn't move the tables far enough out of theway to use that knife setting gauge anyway, so Ifigured the thing to do was to set the knives to theoutfeed table like I always do on my other jointer,but to have them project only .025" past the cutterhead.

But before setting the knives to the outfeed table, Ihad to make sure the outfeed table was parallel tothe cutter head and exactly .025" above it. HereI'm using a dial indicator to check the outfeed tableas I'm adjusting it.

The cutter head is one of those with springs that

push the knives up, so there are no adjustmentscrews. I used two smooth straight pieces ofhardwood pressed down on the outfeed table as astop to set the knives against. I made sure thehead was rotated so that the knife was at top deadcenter, then pushed them down with the wood andthe weight. After that, it was just a matter oftightening the screws.

I also built a stand for the jointer. Unlike a typical jointer stand, this one has the legs far apart. Thatway, shavings can pile up in the middle. On my

other jointer, the dust chute often plugs up, and itreally doesn't take long for the shavings heap toget up to the chute exit. So I wanted to make surethere was room for a big pile of shavings underthis one.

Then did lots of testing. I went through all mylumber, straightening anything that was curved,and smoothing anything that was rough!

With the jointer working, it was time to varnish andpaint the pieces. I still had the paint that I originallybought for my first homemade bandsaw . Maybe Ishould try a different colour - the blue onFernand's bandsaw or Dejan's bandsaw turned out


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quite nice. But I was keen on getting this jointerdone, so green again it was!

For the painted part, I started with one coat ofclear water-based Varathane, then the paint, andthen another coat of Varathane to protect the paintand give it a bit of a shine. The parts that didn't getthe green paint got three coats of water-basedVarathane.

I used an oil-based varnish on the infeed andoutfeed tables.

With the top of the tables covered in metal, I wasconcerned that with humidity changes, the bottomof the tables would absorb or release moisturemore quickly than the top. This could lead touneven moisture gradient in the wood, whichwould lead to an uneven expansion and a slightbowing of the table.

I believe that oil based varnishes are less vapourpermeable than water based ones, so that shouldmitigate the problem. I applied three coats to allsides of the tables. I did that outside - too smelly todo inside. Fortunately, with a hot and windyweather, I was able to do all three coats in one

day.

As an extra precaution, I glued some aluminiumfoil to the bottom of the tables. That way, the woodwould have metal on either side. Aluminiumdoesn't pass vapour, whereas varnish, even oilbased, does. Potato chip bags are always shiny onthe inside because they are lined with a thin layerof aluminium to lock the moisture out. The plasticof the bags alone would allow water vapour topass, though very slowly.

Putting the mechanism back together. A bar clampturned out to be a much more elegant method ofpressing the rods into their respective holes thanhitting them with a mallet.


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I added some pieces of plywood around the motoropening. The motor pulls air in from the front, and Iwant it to pull cool air in through the open bottomof the belt housing.

The end of the jointer has some large holes in it to

vent the warm air out. Unfortunately, you can't seethose holes in this picture.

I also did the wiring.

Except for the white cord running to the powerswitch, all the wiring in the jointer is in fact theoriginal wiring from the planer.

And here's the jointer, all done.


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More articles with this jointer:

Plywood on the jointer:bad idea

Is wood glue safeon the jointer?

Buy plans for this jointer

I thought building my own 12" jointer was kind of a nutty project (certainly don't know of anybody who has done itbefore), but it seems some people have tackled this prject themselves since:

Mike Bourbonnais's jointer

Mike Bourbonnais also sent me a lot of picturesand a writeup about his homemade jointer buildbased on my design. A very nice build!


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Armand Pedroza's homemade jointer

Armand Pedroza has sent me links to his shopmade jointer, loosely based on mine. He postedabout the construction of it in three parts onlumberjocks.com:

Part 1 The designPart 2 Getting started

Part 3 Finishing up

Back to the homemade jointer page

Back to my woodworking website

Building a Jointer - Part 2

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Transcript of Building a Jointer - Part 2