Homemade 12" Jointer

[wtnhighlander]

@Chet, I have done the jointer tapering thing, and I feel confident that the light/medium/heavy settings woukd cover it. But a saw is much quicker.

[krtwood]

Picked up two sheets of 18mm baltic birch and got the sides made.

I'm a bit more interested in the aesthetics than Matthias   I'm going for a bit of a vintage cast iron look crossed with a modern look.  The curves do have a bit of a purpose right now too though.  I won't have the belt and pulleys in for a few more days and want to keep working and I don't know how long that belt is.  The legs are fat enough that I could locate the motor pretty far down if the belt turns out to be longer than I'm expecting.

Since the pieces were too big to be taking to the spindle sander I made a couple of curve templates.

I did awkwardly use the spindle sander on the middle part since that was at least balanced.  If you really look you can tell that the inner curve is made up of different arcs but they blend together reasonably well.  The second layer is pieced together from the cutoffs of the first so these are all the scraps left from doing curves instead of boring straight lines and angles.  Not as wasteful as it might appear.

The length is 46" so that the cutoffs from the sheet are wide enough for the cross pieces and I still have almost half a sheet left beyond that.  I think the legs look too thin though so rather than just a brace at the bottom I'm going to run a rabbet on the outside curves so I can bend a piece of 6mm ply to close in the ends.  I think that will look really good and stiffen things up nicely.

As far as the parallelogram goes, what I', thinking of probably won't be too far off from a lever operated table except that the lever would lock into a few settings.  But I have the option of using a hand wheel if that proves to be unworkable.  I have the tilt mechanism from the table saw which has everything I need for the hand wheel option.  If I could come up with a way to easily engage/disengage it I could have both.  

[krtwood]

And we have reached the period of maximum dynamic stress on the project and are throttling back the engines.  This is where all the parts are here and I ought to be able to really get moving but in reality this is where we discover issue after issue and frustration mounts.

The bearing blocks are held to the frame with a bolt, called out as an M10 x 1.25 on the Grizzly parts list.  So I ordered some long M10 x 1.25 bolts along with my McMaster order.  They go in half a thread.  They are supposed to be 1.5 thread pitch not 1.25.  Trip to Lowes and an extra $5.  Fine, not a big deal.

One of the bearings from Grizzly was junk right out of the bag.  This is the state of affairs with tools from oversees now.  My Jet lathe came with a bad headstock bearing out of the box.  I should have known better than to even order them but they were cheap so I rolled the dice.  Added good bearings for twice the cost to the McMaster order and those came in along with the rest of the stuff.  And here is where things go downhill.

I got the smaller bearing on the front side on last night.  Went on pretty hard and took longer than I expected so I saved the other side for today.  This time I prepared better.  I would normally have stuck the thing in the freezer first to freeze it but there isn't enough room so instead I stood it on a jar with an ice bath around the shaft.  Bearing went on super easy.  Kind of too easy but I didn't really think anything of it, besides which I was distracted by the fact that it not only went on too easy but it went on too far.  The housing came right down against the cutters.  That's not right.  I quickly made a wooden spacer to go in there.

Then this evening the package from Grizzly with the pulleys came in.  Now that I have all the parts in hand I understand better how this is supposed to go.  That pulley has an extended collar that sits up against the bearing.  There is no set screw on the pulley.  It's supposed to be held in place by a washer and a left hand screw into the end of the shaft.  But you can see without my wooden spacer the pulley is half an inch from the end of the shaft.  So something ain't right here.  However looking at the picture on Grizzly's site, the shoulder looks the same as in the picture  https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly-12-Helical-Cutterhead-for-Jointers/T27696  So I'm confused.   I must be missing something.

Anyway it gets worse, because everything is warmed up to room temperature now but that bearing still slides around on the shaft.  That's no good.  A loose bearing will let the shaft spin inside it and wear down the shaft.  This happened on my table saw arbor.  So, yeah.  There should be a section of the shaft where the bearing seats that is a few thou thicker but it's not there.  That's why I thought the pulley must be a press fit because the shaft is all the same diameter, but nope.

Two options:  Send it back, which is the sensible thing to do.  Or make it work.  There's a trick of hitting the shaft with a punch all around it which raises up some metal.  I did this to fix an undersized shaft on my edge sander build.  The proper fix is to weld all around the shaft and then machine it back down to the right size but I don't have the equipment for that.  If I send it back, I have to pull the other bearing off and as hard as that one went on it's going to be damaged pulling it, no question.  So new bearing.  The shipping crate is damaged, would have to fix that.  It took their customer service 3 days to even answer my email about receiving the wrong power switch (Giving them some slack due to covid on that one).  So wait three days.  Ship it back.  Wait for the replacement.  Two weeks if I'm lucky.

Yeah that $75 less compared to the Byrd was not worth it.

And just to rub some salt in the wound, the pulley that goes on the motor is for a 7/8" shaft instead of a 5/8".  So I could get an adapter.  Or I had the option of ordering either these multi groove pulleys or v belt pulleys.  They did an update to the model and the multi groove was part of the update.  I went with those because overall ordering everything was cheaper that way and I wasn't sure if it was a 2 v belt pulley or single.  But, the belt is also super long.  The motor is going to end up way down in the leg and I have to cut a big hole for the motor to stick out the back.  It's not ideal.  So instead of the adapter I may just order their v pulley for the cutterhead and then I can order a 5/8 pulley and whatever length belt(s) from McMaster.  It's only money, right?

[pkinneb]

Wow what an endeavor! I know you will figure it out but my hats off to you I don't think I would have made it this far  

[wtnhighlander]

Are you at least making a "How NOT to build a jointer" video to help recoup your losses? 

[Chestnut]

Is it too late to try and just return all of the grizzly parts and go with the byrd head and possibly be done with any headaches that may come up?

This sounds like a less than ideal experience and it's been interesting to follow.

[krtwood]

If I return it I'll definitely replace it with the Byrd, but it's for the same model jointer so I would use the same bearing blocks, etc.  The picture of the Byrd has the shoulder in the same place so I would have the same issue with the spacing.  Just sent an email to a local machine shop to see if it's something they can do and get an estimate.

[Chet]

I am getting a headache just reading along.

[wtnhighlander]

This is probably why the popular DIY jointers on YT start with a cheap planer. All the crtical parts have already been assembled and (supposedly) tested to work together.

Aside from the helical / spiral cutterhead, is there some other reason you chose this route? I've considered one of these builds, and would love to understand the logic behind your decision.

[krtwood]

No response from the machine shop, and this time Grizzly CS was on the ball so the cutterhead will be going back to be replaced with a Byrd.  Assuming they agree there's something wrong with it.  But well, I have the bearing sliding on the shaft on video if they want to play games.

The small planer cutterheads are so small that the pulley is about the same size as the cutterhead and the pulley always ends up on the front side of the machine.  So it becomes difficult to joint anything wider than the cutterhead.  I don't have any interest in the rabbeting capability of a jointer, but that shallow rabbet on something wide is important.  You could do it by removing the fence and have the overhang on the back but then you have no fence.

Also not really a fan of having the bearing housings be made of wood with something with spinning blades.  So using a cutterhead made for a jointer means I could get the off the shelf bearing housings for that jointer.  

And you still have issues with getting the right parts if you don't want to use the screaming universal motor, or you're just buying the Byrd head for one of them.  It's going to have a metric shaft for the pulley and your motor is going to have imperial.  So I'm seeing all these builds on Matthias' site where they are using some weird pulley and belt from a car because you just can't order that stuff from McMaster.

There was also a bit more value as far as how many carbide cutters you're getting per dollar with the bigger head.

 

[krtwood]

The plot thickens.  I was just getting the cutterhead ready to ship back and thinking of my mostly kidding comment about having the loose bearing on camera, I went and got the other bearing I have (the one from Grizzly that was noisy out the box) and... it's not loose.

What.  The.  @#$%.

It's looser than it should be.  It goes on with just a light tap.  But it doesn't spin on the shaft.  So now my worry is I send it back and they're going to say it's within spec and I'm going to be on the hook for the shipping both ways.

Is it possible my good USA bearing is out of spec?  I don't have very good measuring devices for this sort of thing.  My dropped on the concrete cheap calipers say the shaft is about 1.181" which is 29.997 mm.  But we're talking differences of thousandths with a caliper I don't trust.  The cheap bearing seems to be .001" smaller.

I sent an email to Grizzly tech support with all this info.  

I still feel like the shaft is undersized but maybe it's within spec.  Maybe I need to order a third bearing.  The bearing on the other side is on there so tight I was going to ship it back with the bearing still on there because I couldn't get it off with my puller.

Sigh

EDIT:  The bearing from McMaster is actually made in Korea.  Hmm.

[krtwood]

Meanwhile in the realm of things made of wood, where things make sense...

Got enough done on the sides that I felt it was time to join them together and the table saw is my best flat surface.  Should be fun getting it down.  This is the back and the big hole is for the motor to stick through.  Small slot under the cutterhead is to tighten the bolts.  There's a slot on the inside under those to be able to get the bolt in.  I haven't drilled the holes from the cutterhead to the slot yet as I don't quite know the exact location of those yet.  There's fun stuff on the front side but we'll save that for tomorrow when I test out the parallelogram.  

[treeslayer]

On 8/5/2020 at 10:14 PM, krtwood said:

and whatever length belt(s) from McMaster.

have you thought about the link belts ? make any size you want, i put them on all my machines and they work great, HF is where i get them and see no difference in more expensive ones from other places

[krtwood]

I've made good progress on the parallelogram.  This mechanism needs a lot of precise holes and my drill press is junk.  So I'm using a plunge router with a guide bushing and templates to make all the holes.

I'm putting the holes for the middle rod that doesn't move directly into the sides of the jointer rather than into a rail.  This means I have to assemble the mechanism in place rather than drop the whole thing in.  Some of the rods need to come out through the front of the jointer anyway so that wouldn't work.  This template has a round piece that locates the template by the hole for the bearing housings.

That same template is used for the holes in the pieces that will attach to the infeed table by adding a spacer.  Here you can see that round piece.

And here is a test assembly of the links.  

You'll note that I'm trying to get by with just one rod at the bottom, rather than linking them together at the bottom.  With this geometry if I made the other link the same as the one by the cutterhead it would be sticking out past the end of the infeed table.  I might have to change this, but we'll get to that in a minute.

That lower rod needs to come through the side of the jointer, so I have to make an arc cutout.  I lucked out here in that the flange of the bronze bushings I'm using has the same OD as the guide bushing, 1".  This means I can just use the template I made the holes with as a compass to route the arc.

The two clamps acted as stops and I was able to go half way through and flip it over without moving the clamps and do the rest from the other side.

That catches us up to the assembly of the case and I have now added in the kerf bent sides.  Of course I took the time to space out the screws evenly and countersink to a uniform depth.  I finished doing those screws back on the table saw with its flat reference surface.  The rolling table in the middle of the shop conforms to the floor.  Before I put in those panels it wouldn't rock when I moved it from the table saw to the table.  After the panels it did rock, but after an hour or two it had settled and didn't rock anymore.  So it's not really stiff enough yet.  I have more bracing to put in on the infeed side that I don't want to put in without the parallelogram finished to make sure there's no interference.  But it's going to be a bit weak in the middle since it's open at the bottom to the chips fall.  So it might never be quite as stiff as I'd like it to be.  It's not going to move from its spot once it's done so I'm not overly worried about it.  

And here is the parallelogram with the cast iron temporarily in place, not actually attached.  I wanted to test out how hard it was to move the control rod with the weight of the cast iron on it.  It's not too bad as you have a fair bit of leverage, but the plan was to add some counterweight.  I was going to tie a cord around the lower control rod and run it over the fixed rod at the back and hang a weight on it.  However I found that the amount of force required to lift increased as the table got lower.  A spring would provide increasing force and be a lot more compact.  So here is me tinkering around with just a spring from a desk lamp.

That little spring is all it takes to make all that cast iron float and you actually have to push it down at the bottom, but that's well beyond the realistic operating range.  The problem this is really exposing though is that the two long control links are able to twist slightly.  I'm hoping this is going to go away once I tie the links together with a spacer.  If that doesn't completely solve the problem then I'll have to tie the links together at the bottom.  Since I can't tie it to the other existing link, I would have to add a third link in between.  This wouldn't be too big of a deal.  Let's face it, we've reached the point where the project budget is a laughable memory.  May as well throw in some ultra precision shafts at $140 for 36", right?  No, we haven't gotten that far off the rails.  Yet. 

I do have a set of micrometers coming to measure that $%^@ing cutterhead though.  Settled on an inexpensive brand that had decent reviews but of course the size I need is the one size with no shipping option that would arrive next week.  Because of course.  So the set of 3 was only twice as much with the coupon anyway.  How annoyed would I be 20 years from now the next time I need to precisely measure something and I only had a 1 to 2 inch micrometer and not a 0 to 1?  I'm sure I'll be able to find them, too.

[krtwood]

15 hours ago, treeslayer said:

have you thought about the link belts ? make any size you want, i put them on all my machines and they work great, HF is where i get them and see no difference in more expensive ones from other places

Yes, I realized I have enough link belt on hand after I wrote that.

[krtwood]

IT WAS THE BEARING!

Thank God I did not send the cutterhead back.  SKF bearing came in today and while I haven't seated it completely it's at least as tight as the cheapest one and I think tighter.

Also tying the links together solved the twisting issue.

It's a good day.

 

[Chestnut]

I saw your picture on Instagram tying the links together and that looks like a great system. It's good to know that you found the easiest solution to your problem.

[krtwood]

I think I have everything done that I can get done with it up on the table.  It spent too long up there and I couldn't stand looking at the open insides of the curve anymore so those got filled in. 

Let's take a closer look at the depth setting. 

This is going to work just like a miter saw.  Turn the knob to unlock.  Squeeze to release the detent lock and move where you want it.  I realized just a couple days ago that if I made the knob locking it could have infinite settings just like a regular jointer.  I think this is going to be most useful just for the initial setup.  Missing is the curved part with the detents.  I don't know where those go yet so that has to wait until the cutterhead is installed.

The pointer thingy was made up of five parts.  The inner two parts have a matching rabbet to the two outer rails.  The rails get glued to the inner part on the right and the cover on top.  The two holes in the non-moving inner part were made with the same template as the links, this time with a 1/2" bit instead of 3/4".  

Then a slot is cut in the non-moving part.  Inside of the slot a block is glued and screwed to the moving part.  A small compression spring pushes on the block to force the moving part into the detents.

Probably the hardest part of the whole project so far was cutting the threads on the 1/2" rod.  It got a bit easier once  I understood what the little screw in the split die is for   My little vise was totally inadequate for this and I had to grind a flat on the rod to keep it from rotating.  Of course I put the flat in the worst possible place, right where the bushing goes!  The vise had already chewed up that part of the rod anyway.  So I got to enjoy cutting about an inch and a half of extra threads.

There is a stop pinned to the shaft on the inside of the case for the knob to tighten against and the screw into the link keeps the rod from rotating.  And looking at it now I just realized that's where the spring attaches but I don't think it will interfere.  Oops.

[krtwood]

She runs pretty smooth, even without all the cast iron.  No weird vibrations running or slowing down.  I decided to get it over with and just install the 220 outlet from the beginning.

 

[pkinneb]

Nice!

[krtwood]

I've been slacking on updates but not on the build.

I epoxied on some plywood filler pieces to close up the end of the cast iron and give me a place to attach a baffle that sticks downward and overlaps with the baffle in the frame to block the chips from going forward.  Also you can see the cast iron is mounted to the rails of the parallelogram through slots into tapped holes for 1/4-20 bolts.  Those bolts can be tightened in place on the jointer.

The outfeed table sits on four jack screws to adjust the height and gets bolted in place through the sides.

Here I completely redesigned the depth detent system on the outside.  The knob of version 1 stuck out too far and the pointer wasn't long enough.  You can see the evidence of version 1.1 where I extended the pointer but gave up on it before the glue was even dry.  It's much easier to reach up above the power switch.  I doubt I will ever use any more than the first 4 settings but it didn't take too much effort to put the rest in.  There is no need to lock the knob.  The vertical piece glued on the edge of the ply is to keep the pointer from being able to fall out of the detents since there's no support up at the top.  There's a block that is a little thicker than the ply glued at the bottom so it acts like a spring.  You can also see the return spring of the guard at the top left but we'll get to that later.

The fence support has a t-nut on the bottom side for the locking knob.  To get a really solid clamp down I had to add the thin strips at the edges.

The face of the fence is melamine.  Wish it could be taller but it has to be lower than my table saw.  It would be easy enough to swap out the melamine for a taller fence but I just have it screwed in for now rather than try to make that easier.  The weak link right now is the fence though.  It seems to tilt up a tiny bit as it extends out.  I made sure it was square right at the edge of the inserts in the cast iron which is 8.25" from the front edge.  The inserts aren't as flat as the rest so I wouldn't be edge jointing there and I figure that's where the fence is going to always be unless I have to face joint something wider than 8".  It's something I need to see if it actually makes any difference in use but if it's repeatably square and reliable in that spot then I don't really care about anything else.  Just a question of pride really.

I came up with a neat design for the guard that can fold in on itself so it doesn't stick out as much.  Here it is in the folded position:

At full jointing width it still sticks out at the far end as much as it would without folding, but you can get closer to the outfeed side and not have to go around it.  With narrower stock it doesn't stick out at all.  Not OSHA approved but seems reliable enough.

And here it is just about done before the docking procedure

Chips have been made.  Outfeed needs a tweak a hair higher and the belt is hitting something when it winds down but it works!  Feels every bit as solid as my 6" jointer and weighs quite a bit more.  It's so easy to adjust the depth.  I'm pretty sure I'm actually going to change the depth when appropriate now.

[wtnhighlander]

Nice work! That is great to be able to customize such a machine to fit your needs.

I wonder if edge jointing could benefit from a tall, slip-on auxillary fence, like most of us sometimes use on our saw fences?

Oh, I saw the chip pile in you IG post. Got any slick ideas for attaching dust collection? It sort of looked like the drop zone is tight enough that all you need is a catch-box.

[Chestnut]

This looks great. I really like the split guard idea. i also saw the chip pile on IG. How well does the motor handle the wide material that you passed over? I can't remember but think you went with a 2hp motor right?

[sjeff70]

Pretty cool!

All that's left now is maybe drawing up some plans so others can make their own.  

 

[krtwood]

9 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

Nice work! That is great to be able to customize such a machine to fit your needs.

I wonder if edge jointing could benefit from a tall, slip-on auxillary fence, like most of us sometimes use on our saw fences?

Oh, I saw the chip pile in you IG post. Got any slick ideas for attaching dust collection? It sort of looked like the drop zone is tight enough that all you need is a catch-box.

I think I would want the taller fence firmly attached, and I'd have to be sure it could really stay square if you were pushing on it higher up.  Of course I took the fence support off to make the notches for the belt bigger and now it's all out of whack.

It's plugged into the same circuit as my DC (only 220 in the shop) and I never ran the piping over there so the plan was to make a box to go under it.  Of course I made that tricky with the curves.

7 hours ago, Chestnut said:

This looks great. I really like the split guard idea. i also saw the chip pile on IG. How well does the motor handle the wide material that you passed over? I can't remember but think you went with a 2hp motor right?

That was 7.5" poplar at 1/32" depth.  I heard the belt start to hit the fence support like it did when I shut it down so the motor must have been starting to slow down with that.  I'll be limited to the lightest 1/64" setting on wide stuff, most likely.  It's a 2 hp motor but I think based on the amps it's more like 1.75. 

3 hours ago, sjeff70 said:

Pretty cool!

All that's left now is maybe drawing up some plans so others can make their own.  

 

I'm not going to do full plans but maybe the side panel and the link geometry in a sketchup file.