Spiral vs. straight GOOD NEWS or Trolls?
Dear All,
Well, the Lord does work in mysterious ways and being a woodworker Himself, must of took pity on this poor soul. A couple of months back I posted that I had installed a BYRD “SHELIX” cutterhead on my jointer and that I was disappointed in the results. Initially it was leaving “railroad tracks” that I could feel. I contacted BYRD and they sent out another cutterhead. I continued to use my jointer anyway with the first cutterhead and what do you know….I jointed some white oak at full width the other day and to my surprize its was smooth as glass! Ithoght that I had really lost my mind,so I ran a number of cuts, SAME THING! Now unless some Trolls came by and fixed it, I thnk that I may of “tweaked” the bearings on my install and it took a little bit for them to break in. When I did the original swap, the jointer had a “whine” that I just attributed to the new head, that whine is less pronounced now, so I am guessing that it is my fault. GOOD JOB BYRD! REAL GOOD JOB!
John
Replies
If by "tracks" you mean a couple of raised ridges going down the length of the board that sounds like the classic result of having a couple of nicks in the cutters. Bad or tight bearings wouldn't cause this.
John W.
No, no nicks. I've planed acouple of miles of wood and I'm familiar with it. The "tracks" were as you descrided, except that they were the width of each blade/insert, about 1/4" or so. I changed blades, retourqued the bolts that hold the inserts and nothing changed. I spoke at lenghth with Tom Byrd and he mentioned that bad bearings would cause that effect, but he would send out a new cutterhead anyway, which he did. I haven't put a wrench on the jointer in six weeks, so bearings or Trolls were guess. Now, I have NEVER seen a set of bearings "self align", but I am guessing that is what happened. We did have some big tempature swings lately, perhaps that helped. Whatever the case. It is cutting FINE now.
John
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