jointer bearing alignment

[Dan_Shade]

helped a friend swap out a cutterhead today on his jointer.

somehow, we managed to mix up the shims for the bearing blocks.

Does anybody know how to figure out what size shims are needed? 

[T Welsh]

A dial gauge and a lot of patience. you have to find a reference point that will read constant during measuring process.once found you have to swap out shims and torque back to settings and measure until it is dead perfect. like I said patients ;D Tim

[Dan_Shade]

what am I measuring?  and to what reference?

[T Welsh]

Dan, depends on each machine. if the cutter head came off and you did not keep the shim stacks together you have no reference to go by. I would start by lowering the bed until the knives just touch a flat straight edge laid on the bed,run the straight edge across the bed and find the high/low points of the head. now you have a choice as to raise one side of the cutter head or lower one side,by removing or adding the shims until you get a level reading across the bed on the whole cutter head.you can use a feeler gauge to measure the gap and that will tell you what size shim to use. hope this helps. Tim

[D._Frederick]

I would think you should align the cylindrical part of the cutter head to be parallel to the out feed table, then re-align the blades.

If you use a dial indicator, the job will be much easier. You can get one at HF for less than$20.

[Dan_Shade]

I was concerned about the bearings being in the same axis....

[T Welsh]

Dan, Make a test run and tell us what is going wrong. Tim

[Dan_Shade]

it seems to be cutting OK, I am more concerned with a misalignmnet of the bearings, causing problems with them.

[Jasperfield]

I almost posted earlier, but couldn't determine what you needed from your post.

About 2003, or so, Fine Woodworking magazine published an article entitled " Jointer Tune-Up".

It explains in significant detail how to take a bed jointer and adjust it to perfection. The article includes how to make a simple jig to level the infeed and outfeed tables relative to each other; and how to set the cutter axis. It covers shims, shimming, aligning, and so forth.

The article is easy to follow and will convert your "new or otherwise" jointer into almost perfect cutting condition.

[T Welsh]

Jasperfield,My jointer and planner are older machines and I dismantled them and put them back together(didnt need to) and then tuned them to be dead on,they both cut like a dream.Dan, if you took the cutter head off and changed a bearing and are worried that its out of axis I ask why,do you have extra shims left over after install? up and down axis would be changed if thats the case. use a dial gauge on the bed and measure one side of the head to the other and see if its the same(measure the head not the blade) as for front to back axis there is only the play in the bolt holes that carry the bearing to be worried about,lossen them up and push both sides in one direction say forward in feed direction and retorque.Tim