First floor jointer!

[Bertotti]

Picking up a Powermatic helical head jointer tomorrow if I can make room by then. I have my first planer and now my first jointer. This may be a productive home shop at some point very soon! I have been using two hand planes to do all the work this should save me a fortune in time. I had a little four-inch benchtop unit that was passable for small stuff but it had the typical issues like maintaining a square fence, it had even shifted during a pass on more than one occasion was noisy and caused issues with snipe and some tear-out on occasion. It had no real adjustments to handle any of it.

 

[CeeJay]

Awesome! I love my Powermatic helical jointer. I think you will too.

When I saw the title of your post I thought it would be ‘how to get a jointer up to the first floor’ eg stairs!

I was going to say good luck with that!

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[Bertotti]

Basement shop but it is a walk-out basement so I just had to carry it through the door. Sadly a 250lbs box is getting harder to move as I get older. Major muscles handly it no problem but my lower back stabilizing muscles just doesn't like that work anymore. But compared to the 500Lb planer this was cake to get in. I'll put it together tomorrow. I have a lot of fo wood to process and items to build and I am getting behind. Thanks, I hope it is as quiet and nice running as the reviews say they are!

 

[Bertotti]

I have a bit of setup to do I think. I used a fairly short board and had a bit of snipe on either the leading or trailing edge, the board length may have been an issue. I will play around again today and use a board of appropriate length and pay closer attention. I was surprised that the head left very slight waviness across the board. I think it is a product of the helical cutter head and the curved shape of the cutters. I doubt there is anything I can do about that. And it is very minimal but I can see it and feel it which makes me wonder about comments I have seen saying people get glass-smooth finishes. Well, it is glass smooth but not perfectly flat, maybe one-thousandth of an inch variance which really isn't much. The little piece of wood was fir so fairly softwood. Hardwood may be a bit different. That said this little beast is so quiet I needed no hearing protection and could hear my radio clearly over it while running and even while in use. Literally quieter than a fan. With the dust collector on you can't hear it running. All in all, I had hoped glass-smooth meant perfectly flat not just smooth and slightly wavy, it is going to save me a fortune in time! And a quick pass with some 220 on a flat hand sander will knock it flat very quickly.

 

[CeeJay]

What depth of cut had you set? On mine at a shallow cut, say 1mm or less there’s no ‘waviness’. Perhaps this comes in taking a heavier cut?

Also perhaps feed rate as well - a slower feed rate might improve this.

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[Bertotti]

I need to go check. I really just fired it up and grabbed a short cutoff barely long enough to run. I will check all of it today. Although I do not think I was feeding it too quickly. I am not sure of the depth of the cut. I will be much more thorough today. Thanks!