Damon Stathatos
02-17-2012, 5:53 PM
I had been jointing some soft wood planks over the past few days. Today I went to joint some cocobolo 'cants' and as I'm jointing it, I start getting a 'snow machine' effect with chips being thrown back at me and onto the table. After each pass, the table was loaded as below.
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This became a 'pain' because I felt compelled to 'sweep' the infeed table with the board after every pass to keep the board as flat as possible on the table. These boards are heavy enough already so the necessity to have to use them as a 'broom' or 'squeegee' on every pass was not a welcome one. As I'm going through the stack, I'm trying to figure out why all of a sudden my jointer is acting differently than it normally does. I know that different saw blades create unique 'throwback' depending upon their configurations so I start thinking that maybe my jointer blades had gotten gummed up or are getting dull or something such as that, causing this new phenomenon. Turn the jointer off, check the blades, and they look fine, no difference that I can tell. So, OK, I'll take a couple of pictures and post them on SMC and ask for suggestions. As I'm writing my post and before posting the question, the solution 'dawns' on me, not because I'm particularly brilliant (as is plainly evident) but I realize that I've had this problem BEFORE. Man...I thought old age was simply aching joints and hearing loss, but this 'brain freeze' thing is not something I'm now really looking forward to.
So, I go out to the shop with my camera in hand knowing full-well what I'm about to find. This is the underside of the jointer where you would normally either connect dust collection or where the chips should just drop to the floor:
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After digging the 'cavity' out and letting the 'chips' drop to the floor, here's what was stuck up inside and right below the cutter head. The pile of the light softwood that had honeycombed underneath the head:
224038
The reason I'm posting this is to give a few of you, perhaps, a chuckle. Also, the next time this happens to me, I can do a search here, find my post, remember the solution, and then to reminisce about youth and clarity of mind.
224027 224028 224030
This became a 'pain' because I felt compelled to 'sweep' the infeed table with the board after every pass to keep the board as flat as possible on the table. These boards are heavy enough already so the necessity to have to use them as a 'broom' or 'squeegee' on every pass was not a welcome one. As I'm going through the stack, I'm trying to figure out why all of a sudden my jointer is acting differently than it normally does. I know that different saw blades create unique 'throwback' depending upon their configurations so I start thinking that maybe my jointer blades had gotten gummed up or are getting dull or something such as that, causing this new phenomenon. Turn the jointer off, check the blades, and they look fine, no difference that I can tell. So, OK, I'll take a couple of pictures and post them on SMC and ask for suggestions. As I'm writing my post and before posting the question, the solution 'dawns' on me, not because I'm particularly brilliant (as is plainly evident) but I realize that I've had this problem BEFORE. Man...I thought old age was simply aching joints and hearing loss, but this 'brain freeze' thing is not something I'm now really looking forward to.
So, I go out to the shop with my camera in hand knowing full-well what I'm about to find. This is the underside of the jointer where you would normally either connect dust collection or where the chips should just drop to the floor:
224037
After digging the 'cavity' out and letting the 'chips' drop to the floor, here's what was stuck up inside and right below the cutter head. The pile of the light softwood that had honeycombed underneath the head:
224038
The reason I'm posting this is to give a few of you, perhaps, a chuckle. Also, the next time this happens to me, I can do a search here, find my post, remember the solution, and then to reminisce about youth and clarity of mind.