everettdavis wroteThanks!
The only two I have seen in person were iron as I had to lift one into a blast cabinet, and the other a fellow in Kansas had his magnetic base shop light stuck to it.
Glad you found it and recognized it varied from what I had seen to date.
Are there any casting numbers on it? I could not see any in the photos.
Also, if I remember correctly John Burger has two of the 4E's with mounts. Maybe he can weigh in on what his are made of.
Everett
Yes, I have 2 jointers, 3 head rests and two hinge plates. I never really paid any attention to them as they came to me freshly painted. The jointers and all the rest of the parts have been in the corner of the shop for a couple of years waiting for me to get a couple more of my machines refurbished.
Anyhow, the hinge plates are indeed cast iron. The head rests are identical to badtheba's and are non magnetic. They seem fairly heavy to me for aluminum but that must be what they are. They are pretty robust castings. I certainly would not hesitate to use them. There are no casting numbers on any of them.
Here are some random thoughts I have on this. We know at sometime in the 10ER production Magna went to a standard headrest made from aluminum. My assumption is that occurred towards the tail end of production. I also have thought the 4E jointer came out towards the end of production. So the very first jointer headrests were cast iron and then when Magna went to aluminum for the standard headrest they did the same for the jointer headrest. We know that there are more cast iron standard headrests than aluminum due to the time line. There may be way more aluminum jointer headrests than cast iron again due to the time line. The issue is the jointer headrest sample size is extremely small and nobody has noticed the difference in the past. Maybe because most of them are in fact aluminum.
