i moved my powermatic 6", the outfeed table moved and i started getting horribly tapered cuts. I have searched yt for 2 days. no one has explained it as succinctly as you did. everyone else has unboxing or long complicated explanations that don't correlate to what i'm doing, but yours was so easy to understand and i feel like i can finally get it dialed in today. THANK YOU! Subscribed, added to playlist.
Do you have an older model? I got a model 60 8 inch a couple months ago, which I believe is from mid-80s. Yesterday, I finally put the table top on the base after cleaning/restoring and went to align the tables, but when I started I realized it doesn't have the corner cams like the newer ones, so I was stumped on how to align coplanar across the width and length of the two tables. I wonder if this method will resolve those issues as well, not just high or drooping ends. How did yours work?
I have to say this video was so helpful to me. I have an old accura jointer with a sagging infeed table and haven't been able to figure out how to fix it since there isn't any adjustment system and with a big job that requires it. This video just saved me so much time and a ton of money. Thank you so much.
i like this sometimes in the field you need to fit a square peg in a round hole and make it work..not everyone can do that because they don't ever think outside the box..the way i see it if it works and lasts it is a good idea!
Hey all. The area where he is putting the shims, isn't that the same area that moves? Will you not cause a lot of problems if if you put shims in that area if you want to move the outfeed table for some reason?
A level isn't ta good choice for a straight edge. Beds need to be coplaner within .002",and a level won't get you there. Dial indicator for knife setting is great, that's the kind of precision most people are looking for.
From a purely engineering point of view, using shims to correct sag and distortion in a wedge bed jointer is frankly BS. Many years ago I tried to fix an Oliver wedge bed that had been shimmed to try and correct it. It never works very well because if the ways are no longer co planar in both axis the shims just make the beds rock and rack. Your only hope is to have the bed ways re ground true but wedge beds are in any event a stupid way to support the tables because they have huge heavy overhangs loading up the gibs and causing to much friction. My only advice on wedge beds is this. They are a waste of time and money because they are a flawed design. Wedge beds work very well on thicknessers but not joiners.
FineWoodworking . Yeah sure, I have met quite a few of them over the years. Usually self taught, little if any experience in a woodworking trade but big on self promotion. The kind of guys who could never hack it in a real shop ( pay was to low is their usual excuse) but would spend many wasted hours designing silly jigs while the rest of us just got on with it. I refuse to allow journo’s in my shop anymore. However, there are ways to manufacture a wedge bed joiner that is accurate and durable. These days the demand is not there for that level of engineering excellence and the costs it would incur. For example, I have a wedge bed Thicknesser (wadkin) BUT because its properly designed and engineered the wedges are individually adjustable, not one piece. The surfaces are nice and wide and run full length not one third like your delta. Works great. If your lucky and have an old heavy wedge bed with large enough supporting surface then yes you may have a machine that planes true. The problems arise when the overhang of the tables in proportion to the base is to large. Wood dust is abrasive and once it gets in the ways it starts eating away. You have to oil the ways so the tables move freely but that attracts dust and thus wear. Wood dust combined with oil can become a grinding paste. With so much weight on the beds torquing down on the ways the tops of the ways are overloaded. Gibs cannot adjust the ways, only the friction on them. In fact the gibs are part of the design flaw of wedge beds because if they are unevenly torqued down they can accelerate/cause uneven wear. The ways on your little Delta are pathetic as are most sub 10” joiners. It is self evident that the great machinery makers such as Oliver became aware of this problem and went with very well supported base frames nearly full length with individually adjustable inclined plane blocks. Simple genius. The bottom line is this. Once those ways wear or distort you have a big problem on your hands that will not be easily permanently fixed. Shims ! Seriously ? Try asking a machinist if he thinks thats a worthy solution in this application. Chances are he will say its a desperate and temporary fix that will not last. I know because I have asked more than a few. And please answer me this question. Are wedge beds engineered and designed to be adjustable for co planar ? Answer is NO, they are not. There is no inbuilt adjustment for co planar and thats the whole point. If it was not done right in the first instance there is little you can do to fix it.
this is how the manufacturers advise you to adjust your machine. ive done this to several jointers. it worked for me on all three... my own, my friends and the one at the cabinet shop i worked at as a helper and floor sweeper in my mid teens. no body there knew how to fix it and a major project was on hold. I told the shop foreman i could fix it ... he was sceptical im sure but let me go at it and by the end of my shift they were runni g that machine none stop. ... so yes it does work and this was a high end custom kitchen place... not the kind of place that produces sub par work. great vid!
Brian, while it would be nice to be able to afford a "perfectly" engineered jointer it does not fit most peoples budget and to say there is a perfectly engineered jointer is ignorant... no matter what machine there is it will never be perfectly engineered because of use and wear. Why someone may ask, because any moving part is going to wear. Like you said with the dust and oil, which is true. Just as water wears away stone! You can only prolong the wear by designing solutions to adjust for such things such as wearable parts or cams like powertech has. With that being said I believe FineWoodworking is proposing a solution to a common problem that older machines have. It would be nice to be able to take the entire machine apart and have the infeed and outfeed table way's re-machined but the practicality and expanse of that would out-way (pun intended) the cost of shims (which is $50-$70 compared to no less than $200-$300 for machining). And how does one think I know that... close to 15 years of machining experience where I had experience setting complex compound jigs for numerous jobs, 10 years of mechanical engineering and countless projects dealing with Boeing. One of which was a test bogie axel that required a tolerance of one tenth of a hundredth of a thousandth by hand (no CNC).... or 0.0001 (+/-0.00001). That was achieved by shimming a Kingston lathe that of course was precision ground but had close to 20 years of use. The amount of care anyone takes with their machine is paramount to prolonging the use of it. All in all you had some good points but the majority of us can't afford to have the way's precision ground on older machines. The setup at a machine shop alone would outweigh the cost of most used machines.
This was 100% of what I needed to see in order to fix my problem. Thank you.
i moved my powermatic 6", the outfeed table moved and i started getting horribly tapered cuts. I have searched yt for 2 days. no one has explained it as succinctly as you did. everyone else has unboxing or long complicated explanations that don't correlate to what i'm doing, but yours was so easy to understand and i feel like i can finally get it dialed in today. THANK YOU! Subscribed, added to playlist.
Do you have an older model? I got a model 60 8 inch a couple months ago, which I believe is from mid-80s. Yesterday, I finally put the table top on the base after cleaning/restoring and went to align the tables, but when I started I realized it doesn't have the corner cams like the newer ones, so I was stumped on how to align coplanar across the width and length of the two tables. I wonder if this method will resolve those issues as well, not just high or drooping ends. How did yours work?
I have to say this video was so helpful to me. I have an old accura jointer with a sagging infeed table and haven't been able to figure out how to fix it since there isn't any adjustment system and with a big job that requires it. This video just saved me so much time and a ton of money. Thank you so much.
Awesome! straight to the point, very usefull video. Thanks for posting it!!!
The material from aluminum pop (soda) cans make great shim material too, unless you need something thinner.
then use paper or foil
i like this sometimes in the field you need to fit a square peg in a round hole and make it work..not everyone can do that because they don't ever think outside the box..the way i see it if it works and lasts it is a good idea!
Nice potbelly jointer. Thanks.
I love this video. "THE JOINTER HAS LIMITATIONS. GET OVER IT."
When edge jointing my stock has less material in the middle (concave). What is wrong with my setup? I have no screws that I can adjust..
does this apply also for the infeed table or only for the outfeed table? thanks and regards
Why use shim stock if you don't measure the gap? Might as well use regular sheet metal, right?
Hey all. The area where he is putting the shims, isn't that the same area that moves? Will you not cause a lot of problems if if you put shims in that area if you want to move the outfeed table for some reason?
What level should the infeed table be placed at before adjusting the outfeed take to match it?
Use feeler gauges.
Moral of the story: Don't buy jointer with none adjustable out feed table.
You've never had an outfeed table that's dipped on one side beyond the scope of the adjusters?
A great help, thsnks.
Shim shim shimmy!!😂
Good info
A level isn't ta good choice for a straight edge. Beds need to be coplaner within .002",and a level won't get you there.
Dial indicator for knife setting is great, that's the kind of precision most people are looking for.
From a purely engineering point of view, using shims to correct sag and distortion in a wedge bed jointer is frankly BS. Many years ago I tried to fix an Oliver wedge bed that had been shimmed to try and correct it. It never works very well because if the ways are no longer co planar in both axis the shims just make the beds rock and rack. Your only hope is to have the bed ways re ground true but wedge beds are in any event a stupid way to support the tables because they have huge heavy overhangs loading up the gibs and causing to much friction. My only advice on wedge beds is this. They are a waste of time and money because they are a flawed design.
Wedge beds work very well on thicknessers but not joiners.
There are many people, producing furniture at an incredibly high level, that would disagree with your assessment.
FineWoodworking . Yeah sure, I have met quite a few of them over the years. Usually self taught, little if any experience in a woodworking trade but big on self promotion. The kind of guys who could never hack it in a real shop ( pay was to low is their usual excuse) but would spend many wasted hours designing silly jigs while the rest of us just got on with it. I refuse to allow journo’s in my shop anymore.
However, there are ways to manufacture a wedge bed joiner that is accurate and durable. These days the demand is not there for that level of engineering excellence and the costs it would incur.
For example, I have a wedge bed Thicknesser (wadkin) BUT because its properly designed and engineered the wedges are individually adjustable, not one piece. The surfaces are nice and wide and run full length not one third like your delta.
Works great.
If your lucky and have an old heavy wedge bed with large enough supporting surface then yes you may have a machine that planes true.
The problems arise when the overhang of the tables in proportion to the base is to large. Wood dust is abrasive and once it gets in the ways it starts eating away. You have to oil the ways so the tables move freely but that attracts dust and thus wear. Wood dust combined with oil can become a grinding paste. With so much weight on the beds torquing down on the ways the tops of the ways are overloaded. Gibs cannot adjust the ways, only the friction on them. In fact the gibs are part of the design flaw of wedge beds because if they are unevenly torqued down they can accelerate/cause uneven wear. The ways on your little Delta are pathetic as are most sub 10” joiners.
It is self evident that the great machinery makers such as Oliver became aware of this problem and went with very well supported base frames nearly full length with individually adjustable inclined plane blocks. Simple genius.
The bottom line is this. Once those ways wear or distort you have a big problem on your hands that will not be easily permanently fixed. Shims ! Seriously ? Try asking a machinist if he thinks thats a worthy solution in this application. Chances are he will say its a desperate and temporary fix that will not last. I know because I have asked more than a few.
And please answer me this question. Are wedge beds engineered and designed to be adjustable for co planar ? Answer is NO, they are not. There is no inbuilt adjustment for co planar and thats the whole point. If it was not done right in the first instance there is little you can do to fix it.
this is how the manufacturers advise you to adjust your machine. ive done this to several jointers. it worked for me on all three... my own, my friends and the one at the cabinet shop i worked at as a helper and floor sweeper in my mid teens. no body there knew how to fix it and a major project was on hold. I told the shop foreman i could fix it ... he was sceptical im sure but let me go at it and by the end of my shift they were runni g that machine none stop. ... so yes it does work and this was a high end custom kitchen place... not the kind of place that produces sub par work.
great vid!
Brian, while it would be nice to be able to afford a "perfectly" engineered jointer it does not fit most peoples budget and to say there is a perfectly engineered jointer is ignorant... no matter what machine there is it will never be perfectly engineered because of use and wear. Why someone may ask, because any moving part is going to wear. Like you said with the dust and oil, which is true. Just as water wears away stone! You can only prolong the wear by designing solutions to adjust for such things such as wearable parts or cams like powertech has. With that being said I believe FineWoodworking is proposing a solution to a common problem that older machines have. It would be nice to be able to take the entire machine apart and have the infeed and outfeed table way's re-machined but the practicality and expanse of that would out-way (pun intended) the cost of shims (which is $50-$70 compared to no less than $200-$300 for machining). And how does one think I know that... close to 15 years of machining experience where I had experience setting complex compound jigs for numerous jobs, 10 years of mechanical engineering and countless projects dealing with Boeing. One of which was a test bogie axel that required a tolerance of one tenth of a hundredth of a thousandth by hand (no CNC).... or 0.0001 (+/-0.00001). That was achieved by shimming a Kingston lathe that of course was precision ground but had close to 20 years of use. The amount of care anyone takes with their machine is paramount to prolonging the use of it. All in all you had some good points but the majority of us can't afford to have the way's precision ground on older machines. The setup at a machine shop alone would outweigh the cost of most used machines.
@@MrZamzow My apologies, it's powermatic.