How-To

Troubleshooting the Jointer

By Steve Latta #202–Tools & Shops 2009 Issue

**FIRST, CHECK YOUR TECHNIQUE:** Press the board against the fence with your left hand, and transfer the pressure of your right hand to the outfeed side of the board as soon as possible.

QUESTION:

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.

**THEN CHECK THE HEIGHT OF THE OUTFEED TABLE:** With a knife at the highest point in its rotation, the gap between the straightedge and the outfeed table should be no more than the thickness of a piece of photocopier paper.

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.

**LAST, MAKE SURE THE TABLES ARE COPLANAR:** If there’s any space between the straightedge and the tables, then the tables aren’t coplanar. If each table is flat, you can shim the ways to bring them into alignment. If the tables are not flat, you’ll have to have them reground.

Drawing by Vince Babak

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Comments

MarkDMacLeod | Feb 27, 2017 12:11pm | #1
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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