Ever since I got my 12 inch Grizzly jointer, I have been unsatisfied wth it's dust extraction system. Today, even though I have it hooked up to a 5 hp blower, it was spitting walnut shavings at me, worse than ever. So I shut it down, and started looking around and realized the dust ports were almost fully blocked, way up in the guts of the machine. So stuck my arm about elbow deep up in the dust baflfing of the jointer and found a few extra parts that Grizzly had left in the machine. :-\ One 4 1/2 inch flap buffing disk, and two more 4 1/2 inch grinding wheels, unused. They had evidently been left in the machine and gradually worked their way down where they finally jammed up and completely blocked the system. I had to remove the external sheet metal housing and crack the rigid disks them to get them out. The are in the bottom of the picture by the dust port.
Works fine now :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3410~0.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1489808637)
Some may notice that I have a powerfeed on the jointer, and there has been other threads about its usefulness. I can only say, wow, when it's dialled in, it produces very flat boards at a fraction of the effort. Unfortunately, we have jointed thousands of bdft since we got it, and until we installed the powerfeed, it was one of my most hated tools, hour after hour of hand jointing, until my shoulder would hurt.
Here's a pic of some walnut I worked on yesterday, that was jointed one side, then planed the other. One board had just a little bow, maybe a 32" after face jointing with the powerfeed, the others cleaned up dead flat.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3412.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1489807908)
Glad you got it fixed :)
How do you have the feeder mounted?
Thinking this is one of those situations where you're both angry (the knucklehead that left the discs in the machine) and pleased (you fixed the problem).
The amount of time, energy and dedication it takes to setting up, tweaking and fine tuning equipment is amazing.
Buy the hardware is the easiest part.
Well done YH!
Awesome machine , I am pea green with envy. A few years ago I got a good deal on a new 10 inch with mortise attachment, so now I'm kinda stuck, I want a bigger jointer but to go to a 12 inch just isn't a big enough jump for two more inches so I;m having to wait until I get my money right to pull the trigger on a 16 inch.
It's gonna be a while :'(
Well if that ain't a first... Was the disks made in China or Taiwan ?
Thats funny Yellow Hammer. :)
Quote from: Kbeitz on March 18, 2017, 06:58:25 PM
Well if that ain't a first... Was the disks made in China or Taiwan ?
I couldn't tell, I couldn't read the writing on them! ;D
Dan, I welded up an angle bracket and drilled and tapped it to the back of the jointer. The horizontal plate of the bracket in which the power feed mounts is at the same height as the jointer bed. The powerfeed has a spring suspension on the feed rollers, so it doesn't just push the board down to the jointer table, it will allow it to crown up if need be, much like feeding by hand and will truly flatten out bow and warp. I'm taking an eighth inch per pass, so many boards only need one pass, and then go straight into the planer about 5 feet away from the jointer. So we can have both the jointer and planer running at the same time, and as I face joint the board it comes out of the power feed, and I set it directly into the infeed of the planer, where it comes out at 3/4 inch and my wife grabs it and stacks it on a pallet. I saw WDH's jointer at the last Sycamore Project, and saw how effective it was, and got one in our shop. Unfortunately, it worked so well at flattening boards, we soon found ourselves fixing boards that we would have previously sold as bent scrap. The jointer paid for itself within a very short time, as our cull wood pile virtually disappeared. However, pushing that much wood by hand was taking its toll, and I had to come with an easier alternative. The walnut boards in the picture all had bow and warp to the extent we could not have sold them at full price, so were culled. The jointer fixed them right up, and I'm sure we sold all of them today.
We also use the jointer to during the sales day, as several times today I edge joint customers boards at 50 cents per bdft. The powerfeed can easily be rotated out of the way on its pivot for edge jointing and I adjust the jointer to take 3/16 per pass, so normally one pass per edge and a board is edge jointed dead straight.
Thanks, can you post a picture from behind?
I made a similar bracket for a shaper, it would be nice to add one to my jointer, which is a lot like yours
Being that I worked at grizzly I would like to know how they got in there.
I would look at it like, yay, my dust extraction works now, and also yay, I got some free grinding discs ;D Probably still someone at Grizzly saying "I know I set those right over here :D That's a fine set up you have YH, I truly admire your whole operation.
I don't think they came from Grizzly. 99.9% of the boxes of machines
never get opened up at Grizzly. They are boxed up in China or Taiwan
and shipped over to USA. If there was any known problems with the
machines then they would be opened and checked. Even then when
opened they are not around anything like sanding disk.
I've been running a feeder on my 12" Griggio jointer for a few years now. I only face joint the boards that need it after skip planing. I might do it different if my feeder was bigger. Every board gets one edge jointed using the feeder at 43 fpm, as that's as fast as I can handle them. It does a perfect job on the edges.
The Italians didn't leave any extra parts in my jointer to plug things up. I do have a Oakly edge sander that ate a hand broom and burped it up the dust collection hose unknown to me. Took a while to figure that one out.
Here is a picture of the disks. They say "G Cut" on them which makes me think they were Grizzly.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3415.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1489970935)
Here's a picture of the bracket as I was bolting it to the back of the machine. I made it out some 4 inch channel.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3418.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1489970918)
Thanks for posting the pictures
Is it bolted to sheet metal?
No, that part of the machine is cast iron, varying from 1/4 to about 1/2 inch thick. There are ribs and uneven casting internally, so I drilled and tapped a bunch of holes because I didn't know what I was going to hit, and also was worried about the casting cracking due to the repeated loading force of the power feeder.
I built horizontal feeder base mounting plate long, because I wasn't sure where I was going to mount the feeder in relation to the cutter. I ended up backing it up a little, and this also still lets me use the porkchop guard for most of the cuts. So I feed the board in by hand, and as it goes across the cutter and maybe 3 or so inches past, it will get grabbed by the feeder, and I've got it adjusted so that the rollers will slip a little at the feed rate where the breaker just trips on the jointer. It's a 3 hp and I am thinking of swapping it for a 5 hp.
Im thinking those wheels came from the factory...
The base on my machine is different from yours, my base is sheet metal.
I guess that's a difference between the the Grizzly and the shop fox.
Quote from: Dan_Shade on March 20, 2017, 06:38:25 PM
The base on my machine is different from yours, my base is sheet metal.
I guess that's a difference between the the Grizzly and the shop fox.
A lot of people don't know the Shop Fox is Grizzly...
I was in the Shop Fox division for a few years.
Quote from: Dan_Shade on March 20, 2017, 06:38:25 PM
The base on my machine is different from yours, my base is sheet metal.
I guess that's a difference between the the Grizzly and the shop fox.
On mine, most of the machine is pretty heavy casting, the whole base with the exception of the little dust chute, is cast iron. I'm actually pretty happy with the jointer, except for the dust collection spare parts and very marginal motor power for its rated capacity and size.
I have seen the phrase skip plane a lot in posts. Are you just using a 1 sided planer and running the boards through, without using the jointer, when you skip plane?
To me, skip planing is when you run both sides through a planer, but only enough to show grain better. In other words, the sides aren't planed completely down to a fully machined face. This helps show the wood grain better and makes it easier to stack while still having some thickness left for machining later.
Exactly what I do for those reasons.
When I build my project I'll surface to finish dimensions. This also provides a fresh edge for glue ups.
Skip planing also makes it easier on the small planers
Skip planing or hit and miss planing is as the folks have said. It's a very important step where I take my rough sawn kiln dried 4/4 hardwood and plane it down to 15/16" taking wood frm both sides. Skip planing, especially with professional grade planers such as carpet planers or multi head will really fatten and remove cup and will generally clean up one side 100% and the other about 90% or better. So customers can build tables and such with the thicker nearly 1 inch thick wood, clean face up, and it can be easily planed down to 3/4" with home owner grade planers. I use my single side near commercial Powermatic, and it will do a great job also.
It also allows us to grade the wood, and the customer to easily see how nice it looks. It stacks flatter too, for better transport.
I skip plane all my hardwood to 1" or 15/16" thick. Makes a huge difference when the customers can see the planed surface. The only place around here to buy hardwood lumber except for me is the Big Box Stores. Their lumber is 50% to 100% more to buy and is finished planed to 3/4". This does not allow the customer any flexibility if a boards needs more flattening or has some bow or twist. With my skip planed lumber that costs much less, you get a board that allows you some room for additional milling to get perfect pieces, or they are already perfect and you can use them with the extra thickness like for table tops, etc.
Although I will do it for a customer, I rarely finish plane any wood below 15/16". However, it is much more common for me to joint one edge straight for a customer who does not have a jointer and needs one true, straight edge so that they can run the boards through their tablesaw.
Quote from: flatrock58 on March 23, 2017, 11:31:55 PM
I have seen the phrase skip plane a lot in posts. Are you just using a 1 sided planer and running the boards through, without using the jointer, when you skip plane?
"skip planing" is done to make the faces of lumber parallel to each other removing the high spots. In days gone by they used long bed planes to skip over the low spots and plane off the high ones. On modern day machinery it can be done with a jointer, making multi passes to flatten one face removing all the low spots and then using a planner to get the other face parallel. Or you can use a planner taking thin cuts and reversing the faces as you plane. As the planer pulls the wood through it will plane the high spots and stop on the low, then you push it on to the next high area till you have no more low spots and parallel faces. IMHO the others are referring to over size thickness planing removing the rough saw face to expose the grain pattern beneath.
I'm think we saying the same thing, just different words. We can not sell a constant thickness board if it isn't straight, so pure thicknessing with a planer doesn't do any real good. The skip planing serves the purpose of straightening the boards and removing cup. Good, semi commercial and commercial multihead long bed planers, especially carpet planers, are designed to serve as high speed jointers/planers in a single pass and will clean up boards surprisingly well. Planers like mine that allow dropping the bed rollers into the cast iron also serve as short bed jointers, and do a decent job of removing irregularities. The goal is not to necessarily plane both sides, but remove the irregularities with only a minimum amount of wood removed. The other goal of course would be to have a perefectly planed board on both sides after this process, but since the depth of cut is set and limited, that rarely happens. However, the better the sawing job, the less "skips" and the more fully surfaced the board.
I have a 12" Minimax jointer and I back it up to my shaper and use the feeder from the shaper. The shaper weighs 3300#, does not move, so it works out well and I only need one feeder.
I think it would work with a lighter shaper, but not sure.
The tables on my planer are 36" long. so I will run it across the jointer until I have no more than 18" between flats, then the planer will take care of it.
I want one of those newer Comatic DC feeders, mostly because they are so easy to flip from vertical to horizontal. The variable speed would be cool as well, but as you guys with big feeders know, that easy switch would be awesome.
Kiln dried, rough sawn, stacked to go to the planer. Kind of ugly, doesn't stack well, lots of variation. We plane lots of our own wood, but I outsorce several thousand bdft per week.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3426.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1490544436)
Below, skip planed wide maple, with low spot, so "skipped" or "missed" and didn't quite remove all the low spot. This is the big difference between pure thicknessing (forcing the board down to the planer bed, or letting it ride off, like a jointer). The board is flatter and straighter after this step, and a maximum of 15/16" thick for grading, stacking and selling.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3428.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1490544455)
The end result, uniform stacks of straight boards after they come back. The miscellaneous boards in the black rack in front of the forklift are boards that are so bowed or cupped that they would not make a straight board. They are culled and sold as low grade Project wood for people who don't mind "grumpy" boards, or will be cutting them into shorts.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/21488/IMG_3427.JPG?easyrotate_cache=1490544437)
Danny,
Have you re-visited your prices lately? If you are selling your hardwoods for half what the big box stores are you actually charging enough? If you are satisfied with the profit you are making then I guess the answer is that you are. I'd bet your quality is better than the big box store.
I had a customer come by yesterday and bought 25 bf of cherry I had air dried 3-4 years. They just wanted to build a kitchen table top and turned out I had a small forgotten stock that was just adequate for their project. As we talked I found they did not have a planer and asked if they would like me to run it through my little Delta planer and they did so I planed it down to about 7/8". The wood finished out really pretty and they were very happy and tipped well for the service. This is the first I have planned for anyone else. I just recently added another outlet and built a small shelf on to my shed to accommodate this and I may need to come up with a price for such services and do more of it. The best thing is the customers were very happy and will be sending their son down to look at some walnut crotches I cut a couple of weeks ago.
My prices are based off the Hardwood Market Report. For example, the HMR price for a tractor trailer load of kiln dried, rough sawn FAS red oak is $1.63 per BF. This is a wholesale price. I double that price and add some for freight/transport as the HMR price is F.O.B. sawmill and does not include trucking cost to the buyer's place of business. I also add for skip planing the lumber. For FAS red oak, this puts me at $4.50/bf for kiln dried and skip planed to 15/16". This is in essence the retail price.
The Box stores sell finish planed to 3/4" red oak that is S4S (surfaced 4 sides, meaning the edges have been jointed straight) for $8.00 to $9.00/bf based on width and length. That is not the market that I am catering too. The buyers of this wood generally do not have any tools like table saws, planers, jointers, etc. and are very small DIY, picture frames and stuff, kind of people.
I cater to woodworkers that are knowledgeable about wood and how to use it. They usually have fully equipped shops or a basic level of woodworking equipment. They range from professional full time custom furniture makers to homeowners who have a shop and build personal or family projects. They usually have some idea of retail wood prices and use the internet to check out prices.
I do a lot of research on-line to see what other producers are selling lumber for to get a reference. Some are higher and some are lower. My prices are usually somewhere in the middle of that.