Jointer Setup Solved! (sharing what I've learned)

[Alan Lilly]

I finally bought a quality Lee Valley 38" straight edge to help with my jointer problem.

I was unable to solve my jointer problem setup until I got the straight edge and a good feeler gauge.

FYI: I discovered after making my jointer beds parallel.. that I needed to micro-lower my outfeed bed (effectively raising my knives slightly relative to the outfeed bed) about a few hundreds or thousands. Until I did this ... I was always getting convex boards out of my jointer and I thought it was caused by my beds not being parallel.

Memory mnemonic: Concave is when the center is "caved" inward and Convex is the other.

The morale of my story... I needed an accurate straight edge to help debug a bad jointer setup!

[Tom Hammond]

Good info...

Here's one additional thing I do on jointing boards for panels: I alternate face-against-the-fence and face-away-from-the-fence. When gluing up panels, you always hear about alternating boards based on grain crown: up, down, up, down, etc. However, even if you are absolutely sure your fence is perpendicular to the table, any micro-errors in setup or technique can be compensated for by alternating the boards' orientation when jointing. My panels are much more consistent now that I follow this procedure.