New Motor for Bridgewood 8"

[Dean Ousterhout]

Anybody know what is involved with changing the motor on a Bridgewood 8" jointer?

I have an option to pick one up that does not have a motor, but I happen to have a 2 HP from an unused dust collector that I was thinking would work well?

I just need to figure out what the level of effort is to attach it to the Bridgewood?

[Paul Murphy]

Did you mean jointer?

In any event, are the motors the same "frame" (mounting), and rpm? If not you have to figure out mounting and drive pulley ratios, possibly even new pulleys if the shaft size is different.

[Dean Ousterhout]

Oh jeez... Yes Paul... Jointer... I just changed the original info... Thanks for that catch. I typed this but was thinking about a router also.

[Matt Meiser]

Shoot--I wanted to see that 8" router. 16 times the size of what most of us have. :D

Putting in a motor should be very straight forward. Just make sure the motor rotates the correct way. If you don't have the lower pulley you'll probably need to figure out either a) what was stock or b) do some calculations to determine cutter head RPM. I'm sure you can get help with either here. Make sure just the motor is missing, not mounts, electrical, etc. If so, adjust the price accordingly and make sure you are confident you can fabricate anything that's missing.

Even RPM shouldn't matter much if you need to buy a lower pulley anyway. My old Powermatic actually listed proper pulley size for both 1725 and 3450 RPM motors.

McMaster Carr or Grainger have a good selection of pulleys.

[Steve Rowe]

I used to have a 1985 vintage Bridgewood 8" jointer but sold it about 6 years ago. It was a model BW-8J (I think) and was 2HP. Sorry I don't remember the motor rpm. It is straight forward to change the motor. This was an excellent machine that gave me many good years of service. My model was old enough that it didn't have the jackscrews in the jointer head and that was my only complaint about it if I had one at all.