How much to take off with each pass on the jointer

[Jeff Duncan]

The amount I take off depends on the wood, but most of the time it's around 3/32" or so per pass. If I'm milling large pieces with a lot of bow and/or twist I'll drop the table and take 1/4" per pass. That's on my bigger jointer though, I have a smaller 8" thats used for light passes and usually just skims off 1/32" or less per pass. Both are straight knife machines and both require very little effort to push wood through as long as the tables are kept waxed. I have heard and believe to be true that the carbide insert heads require more power compared to their straight HSS knife counterparts. That could be at least a part of what your seeing.

good luck,
JeffD

[peter gagliardi]

Keep in mind the heavier the cut the more likely there will be tear out in the curly grain areas.

Waxing the tables helps, but this ^^^^^^^^^ is completely false. I keep seeing this regurgitated over and over on a few forums but it is exactly opposite of reality.
Depending on the geometry of the cutterhead, insert style heads can add resistance compared to straight knives.

[Simon Dupay]

Keep in mind the heavier the cut the more likely there will be tear out in the curly grain areas. Waxing the table surfaces will definitely decrease the sliding friction without harming the wood surface.

actually other way around a deeper cut means more chip support and less tearout

[Derek Stockley]

1/16" doesn't sound like too heavy a pass to me. I've had 2 reasons for putting too much effort into cutting on the jointer (other than waxing the table, which others mentioned):

1) Too much downward force on the board. When I first started out, I tended to push down too hard at the jointer and it caused me trouble like this. The other reason you might run into this is if too much of the board is overhanging the infeed table and you have to push down pretty hard to keep it from tipping. My jointer bed is pretty short so I built infeed and outfeed extensions that bolt on to the ends and now I have no difficulty with long boards.

2) My blades were getting dull. I've got straight knives and a significant increase in the effort required to cut was the first indication they were getting dull.

[Fred Voorhees]

I have always pretty much kept my jointer set at 1/32" depth of cut. Hate to fool with it since I can always count on that 1/32 of an inch when I am cutting parts out prior to jointing.

[jack duren]

I have always pretty much kept my jointer set at 1/32" depth of cut. Hate to fool with it since I can always count on that 1/32 of an inch when I am cutting parts out prior to jointing.

Agree . If you boards are requiring a lot of straightening I would look into a sled. You can adjust the jointer but you'll just be putting more pressure on the bearing and wearing on the cutters. Gain something,but loose something.

It really just depends on how you feel about the importance of the tooling maintenance...

[Jim Becker]

I have the jointer on my combo set up to take about 1/32".

[Gregory Carles]

I know this is an old thread, but I found it when I was researching my problem. This is the same issue I am experiencing. I have a Grizzly 6" jointer that I upgraded with a helical cutter head.
I noticed that with the upgrade it was harder to push material through the cutters than with the conventional 3 knife cutters that came with it.
In fact the hole jointer moves when pushing material through it, so much so that I searched this forum to see if it was a common problem.
I have thought about anchoring it to the ground but then I do like the mobility of the machine- just not while I am using it.
Any new developments here?

[Martin Wasner]

The insert heads have less gullet for chip evacuation as well. Depending on the diameter it should be able to handle a 1/16" pass no problem though.