Jointer upgrade

[Jeff Willard]

Well, the "Big brown truck of happiness" just left a Byrd cutterhead for me. I opened it up. Impressive. But-no installation info. I don't see this as a major undertaking, seems to be pretty straightforward. Remove old head, swap out bearings and pulley, re-install, check for parallel, shim if needed, align pulleys, and I'm off. What could possibly go wrong?!:D Famous last words? Almost sounds like Sedgwick at Spotsylvania.:eek: So I'll ask just so that I can say I did. Are there any pitfalls that I'm not aware of in this installation? PM 54A if it makes a difference.

[Gary Elore]

Grizzly has installation instructions for their carbide insert cutterhead on their website. I imagine that it might give some installation tips that you would find very useful, as their cutterhead seems pretty similar to the Byrd.

Gary

[Gary Herrmann]

You've pretty much covered it. Be careful when putting the bearings back on. I don't have a bearing press, so I turned a chunk of maple, hollowed it out and used it as a way to push the bearing down the shaft. My wife said it was priceless seeing me whacking the maple while squinting at the byrd head, muttering to myself. "It was like watching a caveman change a tire."

I let that one go, since I am the least evolved adult in my house.

[Michael McCoy]

You've pretty much covered it. Be careful when putting the bearings back on. I don't have a bearing press, so I turned a chunk of maple, hollowed it out and used it as a way to push the bearing down the shaft. My wife said it was priceless seeing me whacking the maple while squinting at the byrd head, muttering to myself. "It was like watching a caveman change a tire."

I let that one go, since I am the least evolved adult in my house.

That made my day to finally see that I wasn't the only shop cave man around. :eek:

[Jeff Willard]

Well, the sun does sometimes shine on a dog's south side. It went better than I expected. The only sticky part was removing the bearings, and only because of the limited clearance between the bearing and the head. Nuttin a giant screwdriver couldn't handle.:eek: After that, pound the new bearings on, bolt it back in the machine, level the outfeed with the knives (are they knives, or something else?), and away I went. Dead straight edge. No shims, no alignment problems. I think this may be the best $270 shop upgrade I have ever made. It took me longer to install a Wixey on the planer, and that was with illustrated instructions.