Up next in 10
61VIDEO benchtop jointer unboxing
4K views
Jan 24, 2024
🔔 Subscribe and never miss an upload: ► http://bit.ly/BLRchannel ✅ *_Step-by-step_* plans to build your life of *_true freedom:_* ► https://baileylineroadlearning.com/ 🏡 Free, expert advice to *_build and customize_* your dwelling: ► https://baileylineroad.com/ 📌 Viewers like you *_love_* these playlists: ► Winter Tips - https://bit.ly/2rpnUcm ► Product Tours - https://bit.ly/2L2H54Q ► Woodworking - https://bit.ly/2RN83jC ► Real Rural Life - https://bit.ly/2RI5dvY 🌎 I’m on your favorite platform: ► https://linktr.ee/baileylineroad #baileylineroad
View Video Transcript
0:00
In this video I'm going to be unboxing a bench top jointer and we're going to set it up and get it ready for use
0:07
This is kind of a premium bench top jointer because it has two features
0:13
that you don't often see. First of all it's got an 8 inch wide cutting capacity which you normally only get on pretty big
0:21
floor mounted floor sitting jointers and it also has a helical cutter head which
0:28
does offer some advantages compared with regular cutter heads, but we'll get into that later
0:35
Let's just see what we've got here. Tools like these always come with a manual and we're going to be taking a look at that as we go through things here
0:58
As with any machine that you're getting ready to put together you just want a surface you can work on
1:06
Something where you can lay out all the parts. It's a lot easier that way because
1:11
you don't have to be shuffling around. You can look at the manual and just see what you've got, see how many more parts you've got to put on
1:24
So as I mentioned before as bench top jointers go this is really quite wide and width matters because
1:37
it influences how wide wood you can work with naturally. Now before we get into actual assembly, I'm kind of curious
1:47
See you can see the helical cutter here. What is a helical cutter? Well instead of having
1:52
continuous blades, one continuous blade maybe three times in the cutter head
1:57
you've got these segments that overlap with each other. So essentially instead of going
2:05
thwack, thwack, thwack and hitting the wood sort of one full knife at a time
2:10
the cutting action is staggered as each of these very sharp inserts hit the wood. So it's a smoother cut. Lots more on that later, but
2:24
quite a premium feature on a little machine like this. Now every woodworking machine manual comes with a lot of safety instructions
2:32
and you should take a look at that because each machine is a little bit different. So the first step is to install the fence and there are about three main parts
2:43
involved and the first one is this fence bracket. Take out these machine screws
2:54
This jointer came with this T-handle Torx driver. That's pretty handy. I like them a lot better than regular
3:03
L-shaped Torx wrenches because you can undo things faster with that and also tighten them more firmly
3:14
Four, four in all. When you're assembling any kind of a machine
3:21
it's always wise to not do one or two of the fasteners up tightly at first
3:32
If you leave them loose and then tighten them later, it's just easier to get things together because sometimes if you just tighten one
3:41
it's going to make it difficult to align the part for the rest of the bolts
3:48
This piece can only go on one way. It can't be put on backwards, so
3:53
that makes it easy. There we go, good and solid. So this part provides the base
4:05
upon which this next part will go and then this part that holds
4:09
the actual fence as you'll see here, but first there's a little something we need to slip in here before we can continue. So this is the fence and
4:20
it's going to be held onto this part, but this part needs to fasten
4:27
to the bracket that we just assembled and it also needs to be able to slide back and forth and that's where
4:34
this comes in. It's a little adjustment lever and it's got a square nut
4:42
So the square nut fits underneath on the bracket. This square nut is actually rectangular
4:51
It's not square and in this case the wide part goes from side to side
4:58
It just fits in like this. Now, I'm not going to put this in yet because I
5:03
need to have this other piece in place. The blade guard is spring-loaded as all jointers have spring-loaded guards
5:14
and you just need to move it out of the way so that
5:19
this part of the assembly can proceed. Good
5:33
This adjusts for height and there's also an adjustment for angle here. We'll get into that later
5:40
But for now, we have to just actually put the fence on and
5:46
for that there's some more specialty nuts. There's two of them and you can see that
5:54
that they're square. They're meant to fit in this slot right here
6:02
Actually, it does have to go this way. You can see that this isn't completely round. There's square facets
6:09
on each side and they need to go this way. Okay, now I've got to take these machine screws out, of course
6:27
because they need to go through this hole and this hole and that will hold the fence on
6:42
One nice thing about benchtop tools is that they're quite compact. They don't take up a lot of space. I know space is an issue for
6:55
a lot of woodworkers. It's surprising the results you can get even from a small jointer like this
7:06
If you've never used a jointer before, it's quite impressive how much precision they can add to your work
7:17
It's probably not the tool that most people would start with, but it's definitely
7:24
something that you need to get if you want to step up your work. This fence can slide now. I haven't tightened it up yet
7:34
I think it's probably best to just keep it in the middle position like this more or less
7:39
Centered on the bed. You can change that easily enough later if you want. So now we've got a fence that can
7:53
slide back and forth for wider or narrower cuts. Most of the time you're probably going to have the fence over all the way
8:01
There are a few applications where you'd want to bring that fence closer to the other side, but not too many
8:07
And then this, as I said before, this is the the angle setting. Most jointing is done with the fence
8:15
perfectly 90 degrees to the bed, but there are situations where you want to angle it if you want to make bevel cuts or clean up bevel cuts that you've made on the table saw
8:29
Well, there we go. We got the fence in position and now it's time to move on
8:33
There are a couple of adjustments that you should pay attention to now. It'll help to speed your work later and make it more accurate
8:40
And it has to do with the angle stops of the fence
8:44
Now if you come over here, you'll see two small allen set screws. This one here, and then there's another one on the other side
8:55
They act as stops for the position of the fence. So this one
9:01
stops the fence when it's 90 degrees to the bed, which as I said before is most of the
9:08
situations you'll be using your jointer with. This one over here is for the
9:14
135 degree setting of the fence and that's really just 45. I mean, it's kind of the other half of 45 and that's for when you want to lay the fence down at
9:25
45 to do bevel work. Now as far as the 90 degree setting goes, you can use a
9:32
machinist square, an all-metal machinist square, quite accurate. Or you can use one of these digital angle boxes too
9:40
The way you use those is you put them on the bed like this and then you press the zero button and
9:47
it will make the readout say more or less zero degrees. These things are so sensitive though
9:55
that it's very hard to get it zero zero perfect all around. But for woodworking it doesn't really matter
10:02
We're certainly close enough now. Now normally, well not normally, but if the fence was made out of
10:10
cast iron then these magnets on the side would hold it on the fence
10:14
But this is an aluminum fence so you're going to have to hold it up on your own. If it's less than half a degree or so
10:20
from perfect, then it's perfect. You can just lean on this fence with your hand a little bit and it's going to make this gauge move as you can see
10:28
But we're in good shape here and we would want to replicate the same procedure
10:36
to see how we're doing with the angled, the fully angled setting of the fence
10:44
The idea there being that you don't necessarily have to get out your tools and see what what angle is the fence at
10:50
because it's already kind of preset in a way because of these set screws
10:55
My rule of thumb though is when a cut really matters, you're going to want to check the fence
11:02
just before you use that, just before you do that cut because you can't always be sure that the
11:08
that the set screws are going to be right. And if you really count on that cut then you might as well take the
11:12
time to check it. But for most applications, you can rely on these on these adjustments and it will help to speed your work
11:20
So as I mentioned before a machinist's square is an excellent tool just to carry in your pouch
11:26
for checking machines, but more importantly for checking the output of machines like a jointer
11:32
I'll be showing you a lot more about that later, but as far as checking the fence goes
11:39
you just line it up there and you can see that fence is perfectly 90 degrees for all intents and purposes
11:48
That's pretty well it for the assembly. I just want to go over a few
11:54
features here. This is the the guard. It's always, they're always spring-loaded and they should
12:01
close with a kind of a decisive thump against the fence. You don't want it just kind of not touching the fence
12:07
The idea is that you keep the cutter head, the rotating cutter head, covered as much as possible so that
12:14
it reduces danger and helps you to work more safely. A very important part of the jointer is over here and it has to do with the depth of cut
12:26
I'll be going into a lot more detail about this later, but you see when I crank this
12:33
it lowers what's called the infeed table. That makes for a deeper cut
12:40
The outfeed table ideally should be at exactly the same height as
12:48
the cutting edge is when they're at the peak of their rotation
12:52
We'll be checking and possibly adjusting that later, but the deeper the cut
12:58
the lower the infeed table should be in relation to the outfeed table. On this particular jointer you can see here
13:05
there's a scale. Right now this machine is set to take a 1 1⁄8 inch cut
13:13
but you can crank it all up to take no cut at all really or a very light cut
13:18
When you've dialed in the cut depth that you want, you just use this knob here
13:24
lock it in position. It's not going to change. You can count on that cut
13:29
The exact depth of cut you take on a jointer is not enormously important
13:34
for reasons I'll explain later, but that's essentially the operation of it. In this particular machine
13:40
I mean that's the on-off switch, but just to keep things safe if kids get in your shop or something you can you can take out this yellow key and
13:49
it won't turn on no matter how hard someone tries. I mentioned before
13:57
that this jointer is unusual for a benchtop model for two reasons. It's got a really wide cut, eight inches. That's pretty wide
14:05
It's also got the helical cutter head but it also has built-in
14:15
supports like this. You don't necessarily need to extend these if you're just jointing short material
14:23
but for longer stuff this is definitely going to help because it's going to make it easier to stabilize the wood as it goes over the jointer
14:31
So you're essentially ready to go with a machine like this, but there's a couple of things I want to point out
14:37
I'm a big fan of dust collection and this jointer has a dust collection port here. The main port
14:49
will take a four inch flex pipe. It'll just go over top and you can tighten it up with a screw clamp
14:54
If you're using a smaller system, two and a half inch maybe with a shop vac or something like that, then this adapter just
15:02
goes inside and allows you to connect that way too, but either way a jointer
15:09
can make a fair amount of shavings, not nearly as much as a thickness planer and
15:14
thankfully the shavings from a jointer and a thickness planer are fairly coarse
15:18
They don't put a lot of stuff into the air, but still in the interest of keeping things clean and as healthy as possible
15:24
you should consider dust collection. There's one other thing that I want to show you and it has to do with the relative position of the outfeed table
15:37
versus the infeed table. Now first, let's take a look at the outfeed table. There's one parameter
15:43
that's very important for something like this. Oh, by the way, you're going to need a straight edge of some kind
15:50
for this sort of checking. This is a proper machinist straight edge. It's a very straight. It's machined that way
15:57
It's 24 inches long. That's as short as you can really make use of
16:02
A level can work pretty well, too. They're quite straight, but there's a little trick I can show you just to make sure that your level is straight if that's what you're using
16:12
But anyway, first parameter has to do with the relative position of
16:18
the outfeed table relative to the arc of the blades. So here's a cutter here. And this is, by the way, this is the same
16:30
with a helical cutter head or a straight cutter head. But you want the peak of the travel of the cutting edge
16:40
to be in line with the outfeed table. Now this particular jointer, it has a spot for you to put an allen key in so you can conveniently
16:52
rotate the cutter head. You see I'm turning the allen key now and
16:56
the cutter head's turning so I don't have to handle it with my fingers because those cutters are pretty sharp and you can't cut yourself
17:02
But essentially what we want here is for the edges of the cutters to be just about
17:10
level with the outfeed table. You see there, it's just barely touching the straight edge and that looks good. I'm not surprised
17:17
because machines like this generally come very well adjusted and you should check it over here at one side
17:25
Yeah, same sort of thing. I've already checked it in the middle. I'm gonna check it on this side, too
17:37
Perfect. It's the same all the way across. It's just the way we want it. Now with many jointers
17:42
that's really all you can do is to adjust the outfeed table in relation to the
17:48
to the arc of the cutters, but as small as this jointer is, it has a feature that you normally see on much, only on much larger
17:58
jointers and that's the ability to adjust the parallelness of the infeed and outfeed table
18:05
Parallelism is what it's called and I expect this machine will be adjusted just fine
18:12
but let's take a look. So we've got our straight edge. It's sitting on the outfeed table and of course the straight edge is parallel to the outfeed table. It's sitting on it
18:22
Now what we're going to do is we're going to loosen the locking knob here and we're going to raise
18:29
the infeed table and we're going to take a close look at how
18:35
parallel it is with the straight edge and it is perfectly parallel. There's nothing for us to do here. If there had been something for us to do
18:47
this is how we would do it. There are four machine screws on the outfeed table
18:53
but they're doing more than just holding things down actually, because if you take one out
18:59
what you see inside is another threaded fastener and it's got some slots in it, one here and one here
19:12
And the idea there is that you'd put a large slot screwdriver in and you'd turn it
19:19
clockwise or counterclockwise, whatever is necessary to either raise or lower one end of
19:27
the outfeed table in order to bring it parallel with the infeed table. Now once you do that adjustment
19:34
chances are you'll never have to tinker with it again, but it is one of the things that
19:40
is behind really sweet results from a jointer. A jointer that actually does what it's supposed to do, which is to impart
19:50
flatness on the face and the edges of boards. Essentially, it's a it's a precision machine
19:55
It's going to get rid of any kind of wonkiness in the wood and impart that flatness on the wood
20:02
which is what you want. We're good to go as far as parallel and we're actually good to start using this tool now
#Construction & Power Tools
#Home Improvement