Rockwell Jointer issues

[Alex Jacobson]

First of many questions for you all:

I was given an old 4" Rockwell jointer from my uncle and I've been fixing it up and trying to put it into service in my picture framing business. I mostly need it for edge jointing, for example, lately I've got a whole bunch of walnut and cherry 1x3 s2r2 that I'd like to clean up with it. I got the knives freshly sharpened, installed to the best of my ability (I'm sure not perfect) and it seems to chipping out the cherry big time (more like chunking).

A couple of things: I have a Dayton 1/2 hp single phase ac motor hooked up to it (see pictures). It is 1725 rpm I believe and I'm wondering if that is fast/powerful enough to be effective?

How far away should the motor be from the shaft of the jointer. Right now it is whatever the length of my link belt is (4ft?), but I'm guessing I may have to move it close to increase efficiency. Is there a sweet spot for this?

Also, I took off the aux fence and am going to build a new one if I find I need to do a lot of wide pieces on end.

I've read many jointer knife setup articles and watched youtube videos and it seems the 4" makes it a little trickier because there is less room to work with and only 3 bolts. Any tips?

Thanks so much!

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[John Schweikert]

Some options. Your feed rate may be too fast which can cause chipping. Make sure the grain pattern is optimized, uphill side grain as you feed into the cutter. Also depth of cut matters, are you taking too much off at once for that size jointer?

I use the smallest Grizzly 6" jointer so not too far off size-wise of a machine from yours. Without seeing a closeup of the jointer knives, I can only assume they are somewhat of the universal setup - cutter head, then jointer knife, then clamp bar and your three screws, along with some jack screws for the knife height adjustment. I use a Wixey WR25 digital height gauge, with the infeed table at full matching height to outfeed, I set the Wixey one leg on each side on the tables, get the knife to the mid point/highest cutting point and then adjust the jack screws accordingly. I set the knives flush zeroed out on the gauge, it works best for my jointer, but other people use different tools and methods. To get the clamp screws tight, just make sure you keep the knife from moving as you tighten your three screws.

I'd also add, since you got the knives sharpened, just how sharp are they? Remove arm hair sharp?

[Alex Jacobson]

Thanks, one thing I forgot to add, I don't believe that there are jack screws with this model, so I just have to sort of freewheel it with some magnets.

I got them back from the sharpener so I'm hoping they're as sharp as they're going to be!

[Kevin Bourque]

How much wood are you taking off in a single pass? If the cutter head is spinning fast enough, and the depth of cut is small enough, you shouldn't have a problem.

[glenn bradley]

As stated:
- Always cut "downhill"
- Take off small amounts per pass (1/32")
- Slow feed rate = more cuts per inch of feed

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