Jointer cutter head alignment

[Matanuska]

I'm replacing the cutter head on my SS jointer. Does anyone have any tips for getting the alignment correct since there is some play in the mounting bolt holes?

The two things I'm guessing are critical are making sure the knives are perpendicular to the fence and that the outboard end of the knives align with the edge of the table so that rabbets can be cut correctly, but how best to accomplish that? I'd like to tighten the bolts with the jointer installed on my SS but it looks like one of the mounting bolts will be inaccessible if I try to do that.

The new cutter head comes with the knives already installed so I'm hoping they are at the correct height so I don't have to loosen and align them.

I've also noticed that the new cutter head is considerably beefier than the original cutter head on the jointer I purchased new in 1984. Good stuff!

[RonKlein]

Matanuska,

Do not assume anything about the knife adjustment. The knives have to be adjusted to your outfeed table. when you loosen the screws to adjust the knives, you can shift the knives to align them with the edge of the outfeed table for rabbeting, then adjust the height to your outfeed table. When the fence is perpendicular to the outfeed table the knives will also be perpendicular to the fence.

Tighten the mounting bolts before mounting your jointer on your SS. The only alignment is to make sure that the cutter head rotates freely.

HTH
Ron

[Matanuska]

Thanks for this. The unthreaded holes the two cutter head mounting bolts go through are larger than the bolts so alignment is not automatic. Now that I think about it, this is probably because one of the bolts on the original head stripped and I had to re-drill and re-thread the original mounting blocks for larger bolts. I probably re-drilled the unthreaded holes to accommodate the larger bolts.

I’ll have to either to bush the original smaller bolts or be very careful about alignment. I’ve adjusted the knives before and can’t say that I’m looking forward to that but will if the knife height isn’t right as supplied.

[chapmanruss]

The picture below shows a 1950's Greenie Jointer for reference as to which holes are for what. You can see the Cutter Head mounted in the proper holes. If you did drill out those holes for some reason it may be more difficult to mount the Bearing Housings correctly to align the Cutterhead. Those mounting holes are not threaded. The other pair of holes are for mounting the Dust Chute. On older Jointers like the Greenie shown those holes are not threaded. Later Jointers have those holes threaded and the threaded hole itself is smaller. If you had used larger bolts to hold the old Bearing Housings for the Cutterhead you could use those in place of the new bolts and Bearing Housings if they are still useable.

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As for aligning the knives follow the instruction in the Manual. Scott Markwood did a video on this which can be found on his My Growth Rings You Tube channel.

[Matanuska]

I found some stainless steel spacers on Amazon that will adapt the holes I drilled out to exactly the right size for the original bolts (which I found squirreled away in my bin for Shopsmith bits and bobs). Yay!