Homemade 12" Jointer


krtwood

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This is going to be an interesting build I'm excited to follow this one along. I agree with you assessment of the lunchbox cutter-heads. The small diameter makes them slightly undesirable and if you are goign to put the effort in you might as well do it "right". I think the cast iron wing idea is a good one there have been many times that I've browsed used tools to possible salvage some parts to use to make something different. I ended up not buying anything but that's because other aspects of life got in the way and i had to put projects on hold.

Some day I'm goign to make a large belt sander so i hope you are ok with me borrowing what ever ideas i can from you.

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13 hours ago, Ronn W said:

This is going to be interesting.  Way out of my league, but interesting.  Keep us posted.

The woodworking part of it should be pretty straightforward and the metalworking part - well I had never even used a cutoff wheel before so if I can do it, you can do it.  But then I've cut my teeth in building tools with things like a drum sander.  A little less intimidating spinning sandpaper than carbide.

 

5 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

At least Instagram makes sense now. You had me worried for a bit! :lol:

That's pretty much why I started this.  It's hard to follow along a build on Instagram if don't catch every post.

 

1 hour ago, difalkner said:

Can't wait to see this progress through the stages and to see the finished jointer.  Gonna' be cool!

Have you seen this build? http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/jointer.html  You may have every step already lined out but I like seeing how others do their builds on things like this.

David

Yes, I saw that one.  The aluminum bearing blocks are interesting but I have an easy solution for that.  Because I'm using a cutterhead designed for a jointer I can just order the bearing blocks for that jointer for about $40.  No need to reinvent the wheel when a manufacturer has already solved the problem for you.

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4 hours ago, Chestnut said:

This is going to be an interesting build I'm excited to follow this one along. I agree with you assessment of the lunchbox cutter-heads. The small diameter makes them slightly undesirable and if you are goign to put the effort in you might as well do it "right". I think the cast iron wing idea is a good one there have been many times that I've browsed used tools to possible salvage some parts to use to make something different. I ended up not buying anything but that's because other aspects of life got in the way and i had to put projects on hold.

You also get twice as much carbide for about 75% more money, so there's that.  But in value terms I could have used the table saw motor if I used the lunchbox head so it's way way more money in the short term.  I'm sure I'll use that motor for something else though eventually.  Plus more cutters means not having to rotate the cutters as often and I am all about not having to touch anything setup wise on the jointer for years and years.

 

Quote

Some day I'm goign to make a large belt sander so i hope you are ok with me borrowing what ever ideas i can from you.

Of course, that's why we share what we do.

 

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14 hours ago, krtwood said:

I could have used the table saw motor if I used the lunchbox head so it's way way more money in the short term.

This is true but if the table saw was in as rough of shape as it was you'd have a higher chance of needing to replace that motor sooner than later. Also at 12" wide a 3 hp motor might be better suited. I guess you never mentioned what you are goign to use for the motor did you? Are you doing video of this?

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11 hours ago, Chestnut said:

This is true but if the table saw was in as rough of shape as it was you'd have a higher chance of needing to replace that motor sooner than later. Also at 12" wide a 3 hp motor might be better suited. I guess you never mentioned what you are goign to use for the motor did you? Are you doing video of this?

True about the motor on the saw.  If nothing else it's good to have it as a backup to the motor on my saw.  When I did the motor bearings on mine I put a Grizzly motor in its place so I could open it up and find out what bearings it needed without having to put it back together while I waited for them to come in.  The saw did not like that Grizzly motor one bit.  It bounced around and made the saw vibrate like crazy.  So good to have the exact same motor around if I need it.

I'm probably going to get a Grizzly 2 hp motor, since I'm ordering the cutterhead from there and the bearing blocks.  It has the advantage of theoretically being able to run on a 110 20a circuit.  I don't have any 220 in the shop except for the dust collector.  But that circuit has most of the shop lights on it too so I can't expect to fully load that motor and not trip the breaker.  I plan to extend the circuit the dust collector is on, since I won't be hooking the jointer up to DC it can run on that circuit.  But at least I can test it on 110 until I get around to that.  I'll have my eye out on craigslist to see if a suitable motor turns up though.  There is a 2 hp motor on there now out of a Shop Fox molder but it's not reversible either.

10 hours ago, Check Twice said:

You really have taken on a large task. The requirements and accuracy required to get a good finished project for this build is mind blowing. You seem to have the knowledge and desire for this build. A really great project. John

Thank you, though I think you overestimate the requirements a bit and I get to follow in the footsteps of more experienced people than me.

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17 hours ago, krtwood said:

True about the motor on the saw.  If nothing else it's good to have it as a backup to the motor on my saw.  When I did the motor bearings on mine I put a Grizzly motor in its place so I could open it up and find out what bearings it needed without having to put it back together while I waited for them to come in.  The saw did not like that Grizzly motor one bit.  It bounced around and made the saw vibrate like crazy.  So good to have the exact same motor around if I need it.

I'm probably going to get a Grizzly 2 hp motor, since I'm ordering the cutterhead from there and the bearing blocks.  It has the advantage of theoretically being able to run on a 110 20a circuit.  I don't have any 220 in the shop except for the dust collector.  But that circuit has most of the shop lights on it too so I can't expect to fully load that motor and not trip the breaker.  I plan to extend the circuit the dust collector is on, since I won't be hooking the jointer up to DC it can run on that circuit.  But at least I can test it on 110 until I get around to that.  I'll have my eye out on craigslist to see if a suitable motor turns up though.  There is a 2 hp motor on there now out of a Shop Fox molder but it's not reversible either.

That's a good plan. I suppose beings that you don't have the motor yet you haven't been able to determine if the inrush current at startup will be able to be handled by a 20 amp breaker. The 2 hp motor i have that is wired for 120v trips the breaker 50% of the time just spinning up the motor. Adding a load like a cutter head may make it not function on 120v so something that might need to be checked. That said i ran a 2hp harbor freight DC on 120v and never had a circuit trip. I wonder if those DC motors would be able to be used for a tool and if so i wonder how cheap you can get a decent HF DC for used. I sold mine for $100 and it was gone in 45 min.

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If it trips then I'll have more incentive to run the 220.  I am just not looking forward to getting to the box the Clearvue is hooked into which is buried behind the filter stack in a tight closet.  I doubt the HF DC motor is reversible.  I still have my 1.5 hp DC kicking around and looked at that too and it's not reversible either.  

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You could consider adding a gear drive to one of those motors to reverse direction of the driven load and allow you to place the motor where you want. A simple 1:1 gear between motor and belt drive is all you need. Cost of the added bearings, shafts, and gears is probably less than a new motor.

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  • 1 month later...

Parts starting to come in!

1046503357_11motor.thumb.jpg.ca3f6b84e0803ec0e92bda3853e4648a.jpg

The motor came strapped to an unfortunate piece of 1/8" plywood.  I mean I guess it did the job because the mounting plate isn't bent, but come on.   Also they sent the wrong switch.

2123092937_10cutterhead.thumb.jpg.30f01789a655e19e98b32f75b11c4ba1.jpg

And the beast.  Weighs a ton.  I went with a Grizzly head because it was $675 compared to $750 for the Byrd.  Feel a little bad about it but times are tough.  I have a Byrd in my 6" jointer and there's two differences I can tell.  There are no balancing holes in the Grizzly, so either it happened to be perfect or they don't do any balancing.  And you'll notice on the left side the cutter on the edge is angled the opposite direction.  On my Byrd they are all angled the same way and just start closer to the edge.  

I was hoping to be able to use the pulleys from the table saw but the shaft is 30 mm instead of 5/8".  I know of no other source for v pulleys with a metric bore so I ordered the pulleys and belt from Grizzly just now.  Extra $50.  Also on the parts diagram I don't see any set screw for the cutterhead pulley so I guess it's a press fit?  When I replaced my table saw arbor, where the bearing seats was slightly thicker than the rest of the shaft where the pulley goes, but here the shaft seems to all be the same diameter.  We'll see when it gets here.

I ordered the bearing housings from a Grizzly jointer.  Matthias and John Heisz don't like to use specialized parts like this because they want to be able to sell plans.  I don't know how many of these things Grizzly has in their warehouse but I'm sure they aren't stocking hundreds of them.  But I'm not selling plans, I just want to make the best machine I can for myself with reasonable effort and cost.  $40 for the housings makes my life a lot easier and is pretty cheap considering the consequences of failure here.

On the left side of the cutterhead you can see there's a step down where the bearing goes.  There's about 1.5" of larger shaft between this area and the cutterhead itself.  I have no idea why there is this extra space there.  The bearing block is meant to go towards the outside but I will flip it around so it extends into this space and cuts it down to about 1/2".

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I've put a lot of thought into the mechanism for raising and lowering the infeed table.  Matthias used a parallelogram while John used an inclined plane.  Both used a hand wheel for raising and lowering the table and an infinitely adjustable table seems to be the standard.  I don't think that's necessarily the best solution though.  It's very easy to adjust the table on my jointer but I rarely do.  If I set it to a heavy cut and then forgot to set it back when I finish then surprise! next time I use it.  There's a little tiny red pointer and a scale but the pointer barely moves from a light cut to a heavy cut and it's just not obvious that it's set to something different.  So

I had the realization that I really have no need to adjust the infeed table precisely to a certain value.  I just want to be able to set it quickly to a few depths of cut and have it be really obvious which one it's set to.  I figured the easiest way to have that was to have the table sitting on cams.  I made a crude mock up of this:

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Absent are the four locking knobs that would go through the sides of the jointer into the table and constrain the horizontal movement of the table.  The levers are spring loaded so they lock back into the notches after moving them.  The advantage of using cams is that the shape of the cam controls how much lift you get for a given rotation so the mechanism can be compact but still have the indicator of the setting move a large amount.

The big problem with this, besides the annoyance of having to release and tighten 4 knobs every time, is that if you lower the end by the cutterhead first then you're angling the table into the cutterhead.  I could link the two levers together but that doesn't solve the issue because the table could still get hung up from the friction with the jointer sides and come down at an angle anyway.  So I would have to allow extra clearance between the cutterhead and table.

Thinking about it more, if I do a parallelogram but extend the links I can get the end of the link to move through a large enough arc to do the same thing.  With that approach I have the option of controlling it from there or to add in the conventional hand wheel.  And there's no need for the locking knobs.

14 hours ago, Chestnut said:

This is goign to be interesting. I think the bearing housings are a good idea. Mattias and John sell plans but they also seem to have a reputation for salvaging as much as they can, including the lumber.

Probably headed to the lumberyard in the morning to pick up two sheets of baltic birch :)

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I think parallelogram mechanism is going to be pretty easy to build and also function reliably. I want to yell "blasphemy" at goign away from the infinitely adjustable but you are right it doesn't really make sense and most of the time i have really only 3 settings. Light cut, medium cut and heavy cut. I'm trying to think of a defense for the infinitely adjustable and my only thought is it might be less of a hassle to set it? I have the lever adjustment not the screw adjustment and it tales all of 0.1 seconds to go from down to up.

I haven't been to a lumber yard in ages. I'm jealous. I used to go just to walk around and look at the options and see if it sparks an idea. I almost ALWAYS went home with wood as well. @pkinneb saw all my lumber storage and can attest to the problem i have. I also don't have a reliable source for BB plywood any more, and i can't even blame covid.

 

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5 hours ago, Chestnut said:

I'm trying to think of a defense for the infinitely adjustable

I have never tried it but I know there are people that taper table legs and such using their jointer.  I would guess the the infinitely adjustability would be handy for this task.

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