Beaver 3800 Jointer Disassembly

[George Flythe]

I acquired my grandfather's old Beaver Jointer Model 3800 and had the knives resharpened. It was working great for about an hour until the cutterhead started making an awful noise. I switched it off and it made a few revolutions and came to a sudden halt (not a smooth spin to gradual stop). I suspect that the bearings are going or have already gone. I took the belt off and looked underneath the machine to see if any chips were stuck somewhere to wedge the cutterhead, but couldn't find any obvious problems. I pulled the belt back and forth and it did free itself, but when I powered it back on, it did the same thing and got stuck again.
I'd like to remove the cutterhead, but can't figure out how to do that. Anyone out there with disassembly knowledge of this machine?

[Van Huskey]

While we do have a lot of Canadians here (you don't find Beaver machines very often in the US except in border states) if you don't get a reply try the canadianwoodworking.com forum and/or owwm.org.


BTW here is the manual with an exploded view may or may not help. http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/83/2486.pdf

[George Flythe]

Thank you, sir. I registered to post on that site and am still awaiting approval. There's a lot of canooks who work on this model according to the threads. I was checking that same manual you posted and still can't figure out how the head gets out of there. Last night I took out the set screws on top of the trunion, but it did nothing... I guess the only other option is to unbolt and slide the infeed or outfeed table out. I hate setting up a jointer and want to avoid messing with the calibrations at all costs!

[Ray Selinger]

My oldest son has one I think. But stevem https://forum.canadianwoodworking.com/forum/tools/power-tools/vintage-power-tools has one pictured.