Jointer Blades

[Mark Rios]

Can anyone recommend/suggest a brand and type/material of jointer blades? I see solid carbide, carbide tipped, high speed steel, laminated, etc. and I don't know what to choose. Thanks very much for your help.

This edit is in answer to Steve's reply: I joint a lot of walnut and walnut root ball. I've been working on these two trees for 4 or 5 months now and it's been very hard on all my tools. Thanks again for any help.

[Steven Wilson]

High Speed Steel (HSS) unless you really have a need for carbide (are you jointing a bunch of teak).

[Tim Sproul]

Mark,


I have HSS jointer blades.....the jointer is fine. I have no problems with jointer blades. They last quite a while.....the jointer doesn't plow through nearly as much wood as the thickness planer. changing knives on a jointer is easy. You have much better access to the knives and can set them relative to the outfeed without any jigs.

Now, the thickness planer on the other hand is a PITA....erego I recently switched to a disposable blade system from ESTA, "posi-set". Fantastic.....a bit pricey at $300 for a starter set for 15" planer, but well worth it. Knives are cheaper or same as getting old ones sharpened - ~$45 for a set - 2 sides per knife. One thing that I really like about the disposable blade system - easy knife changes. So easy, that I keep a set of not so sharp knives around for when I have to rough mill dirty - literally dirty - lumber.....happens with old, air-dried lumber....lots of abrasive dust and dirt on the lumber that won't all sweep off. Then, switch knives to really nice, sharp set for final milling.

Same idea could be done with jointer, but I don't worry about the jointer for above reasons...

[Mark Singer]

Hss blades will sharpen better than carbide and give you a better finish. I had the ESTA system...now I just sharpen my own with the Tormek. It does a great job!

[Tim Sproul]

Mark Singer,

I use the LV jig and scary sharp for my jointer blades...they are only 6 inches. My planer......if I was going to spend the dime for Tormek, I would just get a Shelix journal head for the thickness planer.....and I wonder about the initial sharpness of HSS....yes, I'd agree they can be sharpened to a "keener" edge....to use Leonard Lee's description.....but I wouldn't expect that to last very long. I'd guess the really sharp edge gets dulled to approximately same as sharp carbide rather quickly....and then rapidly deteriorates to worse than carbide

[Mark Singer]

I don't sharpen them that often and they work fine....Move the fence to use the entire blade. Clean up the jointer marks with a bench plane.

[Don Henthorn Smithville, TX]

[QUOTE=Mark Rios]Can anyone recommend/suggest a brand and type/material of jointer blades?

I like the Freud blades. The ones for my ancient Rockwell-Delta are thicker than the original.