Setting old school jointer knives

hey everybody this is my Rockwell 37 to 20 jointer just a pretty standard 6 inch jointer it's been some post lately about how to set the knives on these things and I thought I would try to show you guys how I do this so tools that you need are a good straightedge one that's wide enough that it'll stand upright like this I like mine in centimeters and millimeters but you could use it either way you want something with pretty fine gradients on it for what I'm going to do here and then this is the real trick this little pick with the right angle on the end of it this is what I use to get underneath the knives you can see it slots right in there like that and that's what allows me to get a little bit of leverage action on it that's how I can lift the knife up just a tiny tiny little bit so if the knife is too low and I need to raise it up I just stick it under there and kind of lever back on it a little bit then to get this set up what I do is I put a little bit of masking tape on the head next to each of the three knives and I've done I've already measured this so you see those numbers on there that's how many millimeters the knife will catch and drag the straightedge and so the farther it drags the straightedge the higher the knife is so you want all these numbers to be exactly the same all right so these ones are pretty close my worst one which I've already fixed was here it was five point five millimeters compared to seven which is what I'm going for and essentially what I'm going to show you is how to do the next one so here's how this works so you roll the head back so the knife isn't exposed set up your straightedge and I mark it on the edge of the table right at the edge let's get this camera lined up nicely so right there so there's the thirty so to watch this as I roll the cutter head comes up the knife catches lifts the straightedge a little bit and drops it off there you go six millimeters of travel that's why the six is on there so what we want to do is we want to raise this knife up a little bit so that it pulls that thing seven millimeters so I like I have these old these old wrenches I think these are from like I don't know adjusting the timing on an agent car or something found this in my dad's toolbox way back in the day these are nice and thin though so they fit in here remember that your jib screws screw into the jib so they kind of loosen a way that you wouldn't necessarily expect feels like you're tightening them but you're not that's why a lot of these chips cruiser stripped when you buy these old machines I had to get these ones made so now I'm wedging this thing underneath and I'm just going to pry on it tiny little bit and you'd be surprised how little you need to do that to move it quite a bit sorry for the shaky video I don't really have a stand for my phone all right let's see how far this thing's rolling now it'll go real slow here whoa look at that so now it's going eight so it's too far so that's fine just move it out of the way Center the head a little bit take the rubbery end of this thing give it a couple of taps obviously it's easier to go down then up let's watch again here where are we at nope still too I get that set up a quick reminder unplugged yeah unplugged alright let's tap that guy down there again let's try again alright there it is that's seven so I'll just tighten those screws up again mark this is a seven now so that when I go around and check everything I know that I'm good sometimes get to double check when I loosen those things off I loosened this jib screw quite a bit this one a little bit this one just a tiny bit and this one not at all and I was trying to make sure that I didn't screw up the the setting on this side of the knife let's just do it quick check there it is right on seven and keep in mind this this measurement exagerate s-- the setting on the knife the fact that it's traveling an extra millimeter does not mean the knife is a millimeter high it's way more subtle than that so now that I get this set up that knife should be perfectly parallel to the outfeed the other thing that you might want to note is that by doing this my knives are a little higher than the outfeed table so when I'm done I'm going to need to crank this thing up just a tiny little bit like really a hair so there you go that's how I set knives on a jointer that has no Springs or no fancy mechanisms this thing's from I don't know the 60s or something like that I took it apart refurbished it give it a coat of spray paint I'm just kind of the action underneath old style settings fence just rides on on the table there's no fancy action on this one at all but yeah I hope that was helpful all right good luck with your joiner

Channel: Mike Schmitz

Views: 177,616

Rating: 4.8349099 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, jointer, knives, blades, setting, wood, adjustment, tuning

Id: 2u8OAS8-xJY

Length: 6min 34sec (394 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/bms42]

This is just how I do it, but it works well and it's extremely accurate. Hope this helps a few people.

[u/Titus142]

This is the method I learned as well. It really is THE way to set knives. Like u/Battleline_pty stated it is based on the outfeed table and not the cutter head. I really don't care how the knives are in relation to the cutter head, what matters is the outfeed, and this method gets you right in line with that. Also it gives you that small bit above the plane of the outfeed that you need. Lots of questions get asked here about jointers and over and over again the issue is that the outfeed needs to be lowered slightly, otherwise you end up with a taper on your stock. This video should be on the side bar!