sean schriver Posted October 18, 2014 Report Share Posted October 18, 2014 Ok all you old-timers and Powermatic junkies...Powermatic had no input/useful input and cannot seem to figure out which manual/model to reference for my Jointer (they sent two wrong manuals, lol...) I've had this powermatic jointer for 4 years. Never tried to 4-way level the tables. Now my experience and tooling will allow me to do this after working in two shops and 8 years in my own shop. I am posting a link to my dropbox.com account in which I have posted multiple pictures and 3 video clips. Long story short, I have 4-way co-plained my tables and set my knives to .002 above my jointer bed. yes, the tables could need to be remilled after 50 years of use and abuse but they are still pretty flat and I feel the gib shems and screws and locking screw are the main issue, I could be wrong, but going on 4 weeks of mulling this over, I think I am on the right track here. The tables and gib shems show that for sure and my video explains more. I have shimmed the outfeed table to the infeed table, my cutter head to the outfeed table, and my knives to the outfeed table as stated above. all with a 50" milled alum straightedge (+/- .003) and one-way dial indicator/feeler gauges/shims. My tables were within .002-.004 (4 corner) and took my father and I the better part of a weekend. When all was done, I lowered the infeed table to 1/32 depth and re-locked the table. The resulting test passes produced a convex edge that while not completely unacceptable for joining two staves together, were totally unacceptable for say a 12-36 inch butcher block glue up when considering the strain the outer staves would be under at the ends of the glue line. The gap when closing one end resulted in about 1/32+ gap. do the math and that is unacceptable the wider my glue-ups get. I re-checked my tables, head and knives. knives and head were fine, but the tables were way out of whack...again. the tolerances are immediately lost once the table is unlocked, repositioned, and relocked. .006-.009 (4 corner). I am positive that the amount of visible slop when unlocking the tables and then trying to re-lock and bring back into tolerance is the issue, but...I do not know everything and am open to educated input. So....I ask that you review the photos and watch the videos before posting responses as I have done considerable research on my issues and posted on saw-mill creek. I currently have the jointer disassembled and am re-polishing/lubing all keyways and shims which I am considering flipping and not using the countersinks.Yes, I will also improve the overall cosmetics but not until I can get this thing running true like it should. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/c759a22bh6dfoth/AAA1jMcWV7FEEQIwA1TAVuLSa?dl=0 I am looking for re-milling by machine shop suggestions/instruction, the steps in which the original milling was produced under for the machine shop to replicate, or since I am a tolerance junky, which new 8" jointer line (parallelogram) will enable me to maintain my .002 or less (as everyone agrees upon for table co-planer) tolerance when making infeed depth of cut adjustments. Considering Shop fox, Grizzly, Powermatic, and Baileigh models, best bang for the dollar but tolerance maintenance capability is first and foremost! budget is $1200-2500 max. Thanks in advance for any help! looking forward to getting back to making dust! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwacker Posted October 20, 2014 Report Share Posted October 20, 2014 I have shimmed the outfeed table to the infeed table, my cutter head to the outfeed table, and my knives to the outfeed table as stated above. Your cutter block gets shimmed to match the infeed table (front to back), not the outfeed. Your knives gets set parallel to the cutter block not the tables. Step one fix your messed up cutter block bolts. Step two shim cutter block (not knives) front to back to match indeed table. Step three install knives parallel to cutter block. Step four adjust outfeed table even with infeed table. Step five adjust outfeed table even with knives. Step six test cut a board cut to the same length as your infeed table. (no longer) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom King Posted October 20, 2014 Report Share Posted October 20, 2014 Don, I've been worried about you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chefmagnus@grics.net Posted October 20, 2014 Report Share Posted October 20, 2014 I can't help you but that is a nice looking piece of iron... Chef Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llama Posted October 20, 2014 Report Share Posted October 20, 2014 That's basically the same jointer I have. Once tuned up, they are a dream! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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