Jointer Size?

[Jisch]

yes, I cut my control covers out before I put the top cap on with a scroll saw. My scroll saw is a cheapo I got at a tag sale. I keep looking for a used one that uses pinless blades, I have to drill a bigger starter hole to get the pinned blade through.

For inlays I use a jeweler's saw, it looks kind of like a coping saw, but it has super fine blades and really good control.

 

[Basshappi]

Since you asked... I use this one.
It's 8 inches, helical head... I use it when stuff isn't flat.
....it makes stuff flat.
View attachment 4198776

I like jointers. (Obv)
I would spend some money on one. But not $575 for a ShopSmith plug on.
At least a six inch. With adjustable outfeed.
Straight knife works fine if you keep them sharp...helical is just better.

Feel my seething envy!

My old, cast iron Craftsman has served me well and if I can get a helical cutter that will retrofit I hope it an can continue to do so for a while longer.
But I SO want an 8" Powermatic!
However, a major table saw upgrade must come first.

 

[TerribleTim68]

So let's throw another question at this one -
Are all 6" jointer knives the same? Can they go in any 6" jointer?
I've found a local listing for a kinda crusty looking PowerCraft 6" jointer that the guy says "works great". I assume there isn't much to them. The motor either makes the cutter head spin or it don't and the tables/fence can either be adjusted smoothly or they can't, right? I just want to make sure that knives are all interchangeable before ending up with something that takes specialty knives that retail for the price of a new jointer.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

A quick Amazon search would imply they are NOT all interchangeable. Some have holes for locating pins on the cutter head, and they may rely on that to register the knife accurately. That's how the knives are on my Delta 12.5" planer, you cant adjust knives "in or out" with respect to the cutterhead, just right or left, which allows you to cancel out a nicked blade. The double-sided baldes have elongated slots that register to the pins on the cutterhead. It might work fine to put a blade set with holes that don't get used in a jointer that has no pins on the cutterhead, but not vice versa? I use my Jet 6" jointer seldom enough that I've never had to change them out, I just sharpen them using a honing jig right on the jointer. Powermatic has a pretty good rep., if everything works right you should have no trouble getting blades for it, looks like they are the pinless variety.
Amazon.com : Jointer Knives

 

[Gilmourisgod]

One thing I was told to check buying a used jointer, make sure the infeed and outfeed tables are FLAT. If somebody piled heavy tools or gear on them for a long time, the cast iron beds can actually distort! Take a good straightedge with you. If its rusty, easy enough to clean up, but if the tables aren't flat, it's toast short of having them re-ground.

 

[TerribleTim68]

Thanks @Gilmourisgod, it's for sure a really old one, but if the motor still makes it run I don't see why it would be bad. Good comment on the tables, I'll bring a straight edge. The listing was for $115 and said "make me an offer" so I offered him $80 because of it being a bit rusty on all the surfaces and he jumped at it. So for $80 I think I'm willing to do some work to referb this one. It's amazing what a little vinegar can do to remove rust and I'm not against scrubbing some tables.

 

[Beej]

Looks well-used but dude, 80 bucks? Go! If nothing else you can get practice with refurbishing and flip it for a small profit in the future.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Thanks @Gilmourisgod, it's for sure a really old one, but if the motor still makes it run I don't see why it would be bad. Good comment on the tables, I'll bring a straight edge. The listing was for $115 and said "make me an offer" so I offered him $80 because of it being a bit rusty on all the surfaces and he jumped at it. So for $80 I think I'm willing to do some work to referb this one. It's amazing what a little vinegar can do to remove rust and I'm not against scrubbing some tables.
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Looks cool! Powr-Craft was the house brand of Montgomery Wards, and that jointer is probably from the 1950's or 1960's. They were made by Sprunger Bros, one of the established U. S. woodworking machinery manufacturers of that time. A good quality, fairly strong machine priced for home shops.

If you want more info about them, including pictures from owners, go to vintagemachinery.org/photoindex/ Scroll down to Montgomery Ward/Powr-Craft. There are a bunch of them listed. Here's one, beautifully restored:

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I'm pretty sure that it has standard plain-style knives. No slots or pins like modern jointers. Just a rectangular bar of tool steel with a bevel ground on one edge. If you need replacements, you can get them from grinding shops like Carbide.com. You just need to measure them and tell them what size you need. They are probably 6" x 1/2" or 6" x 3/4". Those are the common sizes for 6" jointers of that age.

You can sharpen them yourself. Same basic technique as a hand chisel or a hand plane blade. Grind the basic bevel on a grinding wheel or belt sander; flatten it on a flat stone; polish the edges on 1000 grit paper on a flat plate; strop on leather.

There are lots of good tutorials on resetting the knives, checking and adjusting the tables, etc.

 

[Big B.]

I have an 8" Grizzly jointer with a byrd helical head (similar to Rôckhewers) and I consider it essential for building, especially with figured wood. Other than normal milling functions I use it to rough shape my compound fingerboard radius and I use it to flatten the face of the neck blank after I glue in my carbon fiber rods. I've even used it in a pinch to thin down a headstock veneer that was too thick.

For me 8" is the perfect size because it's got enough width to mill bookmatched top blanks while still being small enough for my needs in regards to power availability and mobility. Also, I've had the machine for over ten years and I still have 2 sharpened edges left on the 4 sided cutters. For the amount of upgrade in performance and no changing knives it seems like it would be a waste to buy a new machine without a helical head.

 

[Big B.]

Thanks @Gilmourisgod, it's for sure a really old one, but if the motor still makes it run I don't see why it would be bad. Good comment on the tables, I'll bring a straight edge. The listing was for $115 and said "make me an offer" so I offered him $80 because of it being a bit rusty on all the surfaces and he jumped at it. So for $80 I think I'm willing to do some work to referb this one. It's amazing what a little vinegar can do to remove rust and I'm not against scrubbing some tables.
View attachment 4215144

My go to for cleaning rusty tool tops is Naval Jelly. Pretty sure its designed for cleaning ships and boy will it take the rust off cast iron tool beds with a scotchbrite pad.

 

[turindev]

I’ll chime in here as well. I’m using an 8” jointer that I fairly recently acquired. Took a little bit to get the fence square and the out feed/infeed tables parallel but now that I have it dialed in I haven’t had any issues. (Check back in another year to see if it lasts haha).

I was formerly using an amazing powermatic 12” at my buddy’s shop so I was a bit spoiled. I told him he ruined me.

The reason I went with 8” was to handle the 7.5” raw stock I glue up into blanks. The 6” wasn’t quite enough.

 

[TerribleTim68]

...The reason I went with 8” was to handle the 7.5” raw stock I glue up into blanks. The 6” wasn’t quite enough.

Yeah, I kind of felt like unless you go real serious here there's just no way you're gonna be able to run body blanks across it. So far, the two neck blanks I've made were just single blanks that were not very wide, so I would have only needed 3 or 4 inches at most. I don't know that my budget will allow a really wide jointer, not to mention the space issue I'm seriously running into now. My garage is at max capacity and I'm scratching my head on where I'm gonna land this jointer. The wife is already freaking out.

I really need a dedicated shop space that doesn't include parking her Harley in it.
It's funny, when I started my first build (still not done) I thought "I'm not gonna get too crazy here, I can just use my boss's shop", yet here I am 1 year later and the garage now has a Shopsmith, a band saw, a small table saw, a work bench, a dust collector, a lathe and one of those dust collectors that hangs from the ceiling, all crammed in there! And now I'm about to land this jointer in it too. I don't know how this got so out of hand, but I'm pretty sure it's you guys' fault!

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Thing is, unless you are running fairly bland, unfigured wood through it, I have yet to avoid tearout on large faces like body wings using a jointer, even with super-light cuts and razor-sharp blades. I've never tried the helical cutters, is it any better on highly figured lumber? I've pretty much given up on jointers and gone to a router sled to flatten wide boards, I just use the jointer to get 90 degree edges on boards.

 

[TerribleTim68]

...I've pretty much given up on jointers and gone to a router sled to flatten wide boards, I just use the jointer to get 90 degree edges on boards.

Yeah, and I agree with this statement. I also plan on setting up a similar sled for wide boards and crazy grain stuff. The jointer will be, as you said, for getting a 90 degree corner, and for use in non-bass related woodworking stuff that is just using plain lumber.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Yep. I'm fortunate to have a large shop (all my own!!!), and I have two nice jointers, all tuned up and ready. They are great for quickly straightening the edges of board blanks, in preparation for cutting them to size with the table saw.

But for final straightening of edges to be glued on instrument laminations, my router fixtures are faster and more reliable.

And, using a wide jointer to flatten body blanks is too much risk and trouble. A good router sled fixture is slower, but more sure.

I don't mean to put down jointers. They are very useful machines if you need to process a lot of larger straight-grained boards. Like a room full of wall boards or flooring or cabinets. But for smaller, precise jobs like building a bass, you can waste a lot of time messing around with them. I know, because I have!

 

[rudy4444]

Don't want to spoil anyone's enthusiasm for a jointer, but I do virtually anything that requires surface preparation with my Safe-T-Planer. I've got probably thousands of square feet under my belt, and it's pretty easy to plane figured wood with no tear out if you know how to read grain direction.

I do not own a jointer or a planer and have no problem doing large projects without them. I've been milling, planing, surfacing, thinning and jointing using a Safe-T-Planer exclusively for something like 35 years.

The walnut here is something on the order of 7" wide, but I can plane a bit wider before the drill press column restricts the width of cut, but then I turn end for end and do the other half of wider widths. Seventeen inches of width for guitar tops and backs is no problem.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

Don't want to spoil anyone's enthusiasm for a jointer, but I do virtually anything that requires surface preparation with my Safe-T-Planer. I've got probably thousands of square feet under my belt, and it's pretty easy to plane figured wood with no tear out if you know how to read grain direction.

I do not own a jointer or a planer and have no problem doing large projects without them.

The walnut here is something on the order of 7" wide, but I can plane a bit wider before the drill press column restricts the width of cut, but then I turn end for end and do the other half of wider widths. Seventeen inches of width for guitar tops and backs is no problem.

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Smooth is not equal to flat, and how do you prep edges for glue ups?

I can smooth a wicked figured board with a belt sander or high angle hand plane without tearout, but it's really hard to get it truly flat. My jointer, or a sled through my thickness planer makes a face truly stick to the benchtop FLAT.

 

[rudy4444]

Smooth is not equal to flat, and how do you prep edges for glue ups?

I can smooth a wicked figured board with a belt sander or high angle hand plane without tearout, but it's really hard to get it truly flat. My jointer, or a sled through my thickness planer makes a face truly stick to the benchtop FLAT.

I have a large auxiliary table for my drill press, knock off any high corners so the work doesn't rock, and plane away. I also use tapered shims and use double stick carpet tape to stabilize boards before planing. One the top surface is planed I flip them over and plane the other surface flat. It's really quite easy, and the result is a perfectly FLAT and true planed surface.

I've been doing this for 35 years, and I wouldn't keep doing it if it wasn't easy with good results. That's just me, though. Some folks just like to make it a big effort.

I can prep edges for joining by clamping them upright between two guide rails I keep for this purpose and come out with gap-free jointed edges to glue. I made custom lap steels for the first five years of retirement and did all the edges that mated body wings to the central "body" section. I can assure you that there's no problem getting good gap free glue joints.

I actually prefer to edge joint using a spiral carbide router bit and edge guides, but the Safe-T-Planer does it with minimal outlay of effort, too.

I don't care how people choose to work, but I'm always amazed at how much effort and work someone will put into doing a task with a tool that just doesn't work very effectively.

I've got more photos, like planing head stock overlays, thinnig fretboards to the correct dimension, surfacing the rear of the head stock area, planing thin veneers for control cavity covers, truing surfaces for glue up of multi-laminate necks, etc. but I think folks get the picture.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

I have a large auxiliary table for my drill press, knock off any high corners so the work doesn't rock, and plane away. I also use tapered shims and use double stick carpet tape to stabilize boards before planing.

That makes perfect sense. I do the same with stock too wide for my jointer.

Since you've been doing this for many years, you've probably run into plenty who think both faces of a board can be surfaced on a jointer or simply thickness planing a board without flattening the first face with make it flat.

The context of the second post adds a lot.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

About my only complaint so far with the router sled is dust control, or more accurately shaving control, it flings stuff out in a circular arc, including back at me, a single-point vacuum port would only catch what happens to be flung in that direction. My jointer has a dust port, but even when I have a vacuum on it, it flings a % of shavings off the back of the table. I have yet to own almost any tool where the dust collection worked worth a damn, except maybe my Porter Cable sander with the perforated discs hooked up to vacuum.

I briefly owned a Saf-T-planer, and wasn't overwhelmed with the finish I was getting out of it, about what the photos show, a series of overlapping circular tool marks that had to be sanded out. Part of that may have been due to the age and accumulated bearing slop on my old drill press, if the drill is a really tight, rigid structure, seems like you'd get better results. At any rate, I seem to get a really smooth cut using the router sled and a Freud 1-1/4" dia. flattening bit. Really glass smooth finish with no tearout, I'm sold. Different strokes, all that matters is what works for you, took me too long to figure this out.