So, to build my homemade jointer, I started with one of those little
Delta portable planers. And I took it apart to get the cutter head out of it.
As well as the motor.
The first challenge was to make bearing flanges to fit around
the ball bearings that are already pressed onto the cutter head.
And making those out of birch plywood seemed to work.
I had to mount the motor a little bit further away than it was on the
original planer so I had to buy a longer belt.
The motor pivots on a shaft for belt tensioning.
This is actually exactly same shaft that was used in the original planer
for tensioning the belt.
Here's spinning it up for the first time. I'm spinning it up
really slowly by controlling the voltage from the variamp.
So far, so good. Nothing exploding.
Ok. Let's try it at a higher speed.
So, so far I can spin the cutter head now to make the parallelogram
mechanism to raise and lower the infeed table.
The parallelogram mechanism uses some 3/8th inch steel shafts
for everything to pivot on.
My design really didn't leave any room for error. So, I think I got lucky
that it all fit together without having to make adjustments.
It was a very tight fit.
The advantage of a parallelogram mechanism is that's it's much easier
to keep the table from rocking as it moves back and forth.
The infeed and outfeed tables are made by gluing 2 pieces of 1/4 inch birch plywood
together. So, that gives me a 1 1/2 inch or 38 millimeter
thick sandwich. Which will, hopefully, stay nice and flat.
I'm using my homemade long-reach C-clamps to apply some pressure
in the middle of the sandwich.
And lots and lots of clamps around the edges.
I screwed some machine screws into
undersized holes in the bottom of the table.
And here I'm cutting those off to leave, just the stubs sticking out at the bottom.
Here's checking the fit for the table mount. I'm using these funny
T-shaped, knot down faster nuts
to screw the rails onto the bottom of the table.
Now this is just a test fit. For the actual mount it's much more difficult to get at.
So, with the table in place Putting these T-nuts back in where they need to go
is really fiddly.
I shortened an Allen key so I could still get in there and actually turn the hex
head on that screw.
I was really keen to test things out so
even before I had the outfeed table mounted
I pushed a piece of wood across the cutter just to try it out.
Just like I did for the infeed table, I'm also screwing
some threaded rods straight into the wood.
But this time, I'm using much thicker threaded rod.
And if I tune this in that threaded rod, to turn it in and just removing those.
And that board was there to make sure that thing went in there straight.
Now, putting a lock nut on each stud.
These will help to support the table at the right level.
Now, by turning those nuts, I can precisely
adjust the height of each corner of the table.
There's also some nuts that go on the bottom but those are really fiddly
to get in. There's a 3 millimeter thick piece of steel that
goes on top of each table. And here I'm putting a bevel on the edge that's
gonna go up against the cutter head.
The sheet metal's actually held down with just a small number of
number 4 wood screws.
That holds it flat against the wooden table.
So, next I'm setting the outfeed table to be exactly parallel to
the drum of the cutter head.
And, with the outfeed table set. I'm using it's position
to set the knives. I can't use the setting gauge that came with that planer.
Because there's not enough room around it and I decided to set the magnet
a little bit deeper than they were originally set in the planer.
Next, I built a nice hand-crank mechanism to do fine adjustments on the
infeed slide.
And, no jointer's complete without a fence.
This fence isn't actually angle adjustable because I find, I never ever use
the bevel feature of my other jointer.
And the guard for the cutter head. I never actually use the guard
on my other jointer. But, I don't really trust this jointer yet
So, I figure a guard would be a useful thing to have.
And, here's adding the return spring for the guard.
I should really replace this with a bigger spring.
But this is the most suitable spring I had in my junk collection.
Well, it seems to be working.
More about this jointer in my next video.