Homemade 12" Jointer

[jbuss8706]

Over the past month I've been building an adaption of Mathias Wandel's jointer (check it out on YouTube if you haven't seen it). He used a lot of cheap material, as the purpose of his build was an economical one. Doing a bunch of research I gathered ideas I liked from other builds and combined them all into my build. Realizing the sole purpose of a Jointer is to flatten stock, I wasn't comfortable having the jointer beds being made of laminated baltic birch ply. So I purchased a set of SawStop Extension Wings, grinded a 45 degree bevel (to fit over the Cutter Head). Almost the entire machine is built from Baltic Birch ply and Cherry (used what I had and it's a stable wood).

Since I ended up using the jointer beds and not building them, the plans I purchased from Mathias become more of a visual guide. So this was a build as I go project, so there were some hiccups and things I would do in a different order if I knew exactly where the cut would be. There was a lot of trial and error, taking the beds on and off after taking measurements as I wanted the beds as close to the cutterhead as possible.

I realize some people may question the stability of the machine or question why I spent the time building and they would have just bought one. In reality, a 12" jointer with these bed lengths (a little over 60" total length) would be way outside of my price range. The cutterhead cost me nothing (already had it) and I returned a bunch of stuff to Harbor Freight that basically paid for the motor (could have also used the universal motor that I pulled from the same planer I got the cutterhead from, but they are loud). So I'm in for the materials ($90) belt and pulleys $17 and the Extension Wings I used for the beds $180 for a total of $287 spent on this project. Not bad.

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Dead square
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[Dane]

Wow.  That is AWESOME.  I have been pondering making one of those myself for years.  The sawstop wings are an excellent idea.  THanks for posting.

 

[jbuss8706]

This was a very fun build. I'm working on a second post showing more of the internals to help out. I'll know more in a year but it was totally worth the build, jointing is a pleasure now, not something I dread doing.

 

[jbuss8706]

Wanted to share a bit of the internal makeup of the machine, in case it helps anyone.

The frame is made of laminated plywood, 1 baltic birch and one A/B plywood, totalling around 19 ply Plenty strong enough and should provide for negligible movement in the shop.
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Getting through the cast iron was interesting, but a grinder with fresh cut off wheels got the job done. Was a bit nervous cutting through $180 investment!
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Probably overkill, but I doubled the parallelgram links, made from baltic birch and did three rows instead of 2 like in the plans.[attachimg=3]
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This shows how the infeed and outfeed will be attached, laminated 3/4" cherry on each side, bolted down through 4 holes, again overkill but gave me piece of mind as these bolts will carry the weight of the force that I use to push the stock down and through the cutterhead, so I don't want any movement.
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I ended up getting an induction motor from HF, 1.5 HP at 3600 RPM, much much quieter than the motor in the planer. The pulley's are right about 3:1 ratio given me around 10000 RPM at the cutterhead. Because of this, Mathias belt tensioning system wouldn't work so I devised a half sliding dovetail system for mine. Seems to work well, minimal belt vibration. Overall, the extra weight on the frame and of course the infeed/outfeed tables being cast iron, the vibration is very minimal, something I was worried about.
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[diymark]

Excellent ingenuity and frugalness. Have you used it much? Any photos of cut quality?

 

[Brandon]

Very impressive and nicely done. I have a pretty good 8" jointer already but something larger would come in handy for sure. I'll have to look into doing one. Thanks for sharing

 

[jbuss8706]

Excellent ingenuity and frugalness. Have you used it much? Any photos of cut quality?

Working on a long double vanity top made from walnut, around 80" long, some of the boards are 10" wide. I literally wouldn't have been able to come close to jointing these boards with my old jointer. It worked flawlessly. [attachimg=1]

 

[jbuss8706]

I came up with a different design for the fence from a traditional jointer fence. I need to be able to keep this jointer as close to the wall as possible and with traditional fences, the extension keeps this from happening.

The two 95lbs switchable magnets seem to hold up. Made it from MDF because I wasn't too sure if the design would actually work, but it seems to be working well. ''
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