Align Jointer Tables Parallel with a Dial Indicator

microjig maker of the gripper work safer work smarter I have a small confession to make when I first purchased my jointer over a decade ago I never bothered to check to make sure that the infeed and outfeed table were perfectly parallel with each other I just assumed that when I bought it that they said it correctly at the factory and I just kind of went from there I've never had any problems using this jointer it's been working okay but it's always been in the back of my mind if whether or not the two tables are parallel to each other's it's always kind of bothered being just a little bit not knowing in order to check for that it's pretty popular on the internet and YouTube you'll find some videos where people will use a straight edge and feeler gauges to check to make sure the two that the two tables are parallel to each other I don't own a straightedge that's that I would trust enough to use use it for something like that where you're measuring with in thousandths of an inch and I never bothered to buy one so but I've often wondered it will be possible to do this to check for this coat make sure they're parallel to each other using a dial indicator and I've been thinking about this the last few days and I came up with a solution and this is it and it works and I've actually checked my jointer and my outfeed table was down by 27 thousandths of an inch and I've already corrected it but what I want to show you guys today is how I made this jig and go through the process of using it the first thing I want to do is rip a piece a four quarter stock to about an inch and a half wide and the length of this piece of stock is really going to depend on the length of your jointer this will make more sense later I have a piece of poplar that's four and a half inches square and at three quarters of an inch thick and these little pieces that we just cut on the crosscut sled are going to be feet and I'm going to glue one in each corner because I don't feel like waiting for the glue to dry on this one I'm going to pick up from the one I already made and I disassembled it so the next thing you want to do after you glue on your feet and the glue is dried is you want to flatten all these feet so I used a granite surface plate and I took a piece of sandpaper and place it on top of the granite surface plate and then just sand the feet so they're nice and flat and if you want to you can take a pencil and make a mark on each foot and as you sand it if all the pencil disappears during the sanding process you'll know that all the feet have been sanded and it should be flat at that point now you want to pre-drill and screw the foot assembly board to that four quarter board that we ripped earlier before you can attach the dial indicator you need to know where the placement is going to be for the hole to attach the dial indicator now with the feet side of the alignment tool on one of the tables of the jointer you're going to want to use a weight so that you can elevate the opposite side of the alignment tool off of the other table now once you do that you're going to want to take your dial indicator and place it against the end of the fork of the four quarter board and Mark for a hole to pre-drill for a screw my dial indicator didn't fit so I had to attach a block of wood to make room for the screw hole you might not have to do that for your dial indicator it kind of depends on the model dial indicator that you're using so once you're all set just place the dial indicator on the end of the alignment tool make a mark with a pencil pre-drill and then we can attach it with a screw in order to make this a little bit easier to understand it might help to think of the infeed and the Alfie table of the jointer as planes in space and what we're trying to do is get both planes parallel to each other and it also might help to think back to your high school geometry class when you learned about planes and if you remember it only takes three points in space to define a plane as long as the points are not on the same line it only takes three to define a plane so all we have to do is make sure that three points on one plane match up with three points on the other plane and we can check that the two planes are parallel to each other and that's essentially what we're going to do here I have my magnetic base of my dial indicator on the infeed side of my jointer and the dial indicator on the outfeed side I have the plunger tip on a sharpie mark at one here and I have a sharpie mark here now if I zero out my dial indicator bezel on one of the spots and push the dial indicator I can add magnetic base back to the other spot if I don't see any deviation and the needle that means that this line and essentially this line that was defined by pushing the magnetic base back both those lines are parallel to each other mine is off by mm of an inch and honestly I'm not going to worry about that now in order to define a plane remember we need a third point so that's what we'll measure next I have the feet side of my new lawanna jig on the infeed side of my jointer and on the output side I have the dial indicator and plunger now I have the weight on the infeed side pushing the feet down so that it doesn't go crashing forward now in order to use this you want to zero your dial indicator at the back position and it will slide the whole alignment tool down to the other side of the table and if we don't see any deviation and the needle that means that this line and this line are parallel to each other and because we already know that these two points and these two points are parallel to each other we've defined the two planes and we can say that both planes are parallel to each other so let's see how we do here either I will tell you that I've already I've already gone through the alignment process with my jointer and my originally my jointer was off by 27 thousands of an inch so I've already shimmed the outfeed side my jointer slides on dovetailed ways so when you have dovetail ways for your jointer you don't want to use James and you're going to want to shim the outfeed side of your jointer so let's see how this does and it measures three thousandths of an inch so as I mentioned already my outfi table was actually sagging down by 27 thousandths of an inch when I checked it with my new alignment tool so I took a soda can and aluminum soda can and I cut out two shims one for one side and one for the other there are two bolts in the back of the jointer that you have to loosen and then you can lift the out the table and then slide the shims underneath the dovetailed way originally I just tried one shim on each side and I got the error down to around 13 thousands of an inch and I'm happy with that so yeah another reason to go buy another dial indicator how cool is that so if you've been watching my videos and you still haven't gone out and bought a dial indicator do yourself a favor and go get one you can get them pretty cheap I think this one is a it was made in China and it is one of those $15 probably for the dowel indicator you can spend a lot of money on dial indicators but for woodworking I really don't think it's absolutely necessary this one's good to a thousandth of an inch so yeah so put your feeler gauges away and put your straight edges away when you're checking for parallelism between the infeed table and the Alfie table I'm sorry this video seemed rushed I just thought of this and I wanted to get it out to you guys as quick as I could so if you have any questions please leave them in the comment section below and show your support by joining my patreon community and you'll see a link in the description below to learn more about that and subscribe if you're not already subscribed thanks for watching guys

Channel: GarageWoodworks

Views: 44,527

Rating: 4.8953724 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, how to, diy, woodshop, lumber, router, tablesaw, tutorials, building, projects, plans, furniture, bandsaw, jointer, planer, milling, alignment, parallel

Id: jAyktFxZfwQ

Length: 8min 18sec (498 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 08 2017