Hi Guys, I ended up replacing the jointer blades today. It was pretty fun trying to figure out how to align all of the accurately. If you are interested I wrote up the procedure on the wiki.
The alignment I did follow does mean that there is the slightest amount of cutting that the jointer will do when the tables are isoplanar, but should be really minimal.
Absolutely fabulous looking!
That is an excellent write up on the blade alignment! Thanks for championing this!
That is similar to the process I use except that I set the height of the knives so it only moves the stick, or in my case an aluminum ruler, about 1/16 to 1/8 inch ensuring that the movement is equal on both ends and the middle of all 3 knives. This is also a good time to ensure that the infeed and outfeed tables are absolutely co-planer. I’ve tried a few of those magnetic knife setting jigs that are out there, including the ones that come with the jointer, but find that they are more finicky and trouble than they’re worth.
Yeah, i also wasn’t sure if those jigs would be worth it. Figured i would try it without one first. I really tried for 1/8-1/16 but I found the set screws were veryyyy sensitive.
Yeah; remember that the distance it is moving is similar to cosine error on indicating and you are nearing 90 degrees.
So glad we’ve got a spare set; we should get that sent off with the sawblade; assuming that is ready for a resharpen.
The first time I did it I think it took me more than a couple of hours. It’s not one of those things you do very often in a small shop so I don’t think most of us really get a chance to get really quick at it. I still set aside at least an hour for a complete knife swap.
BTW, if you’re swapping out the knives because you’ve got nicks in them, if they’re still relatively sharp you can just loosen one of the knives and slide it to one side or the other about a millimetre and reset the knife. That should deal with the planer tracks but you can only get away with that trick once or twice.
There were more than just small nicks in them. It looks like the jointer has pretty much only been used with the fence all the way back and the blades were missing significant material on their far edges (definitely hit a few undesirables too). I was going to make a jig to see if it was possible to resharpen but given the amount of metal missing, I suspect it will be pretty laborious.
That is a killer insight! These were certainly beyond that but that’s a great one to know for the future. Thanks!
We could have advanced the fence forward and basically used the last 4" of the blades, but I think getting a second set of knives lets us stage one sharp set while we keep it in operation. If someone from the space wants to make a honing guide for them, that’d be great, but otherwise, I think the conclusion is that we have a quality knife&saw or similar vendor in our future for a bunch of various saws and blades all at once.
Quality Saw & Knife, as you are probably aware, moved out to deepest, darkest Surrey last year however they do provide free pickup and drop off in the city on Tuesdays and Fridays. If you have saw blades or jointer/planer knives to be sharpened or want to purchase jointer/planer knives, table saw or bandsaw blades just give them a call to arrange.
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