I recently bought a Jet 6" jointer to support a cabinet project I am going to do over the winter. Jointer is in great shape, the acquisition process went very well and I got tons of good general ww-ing tidbits from the seller but it needed to have the knives changed. To say that my experience with jointers is limited would be an understatement. This inexperience combined with various posts I have read about changing the knives led me to approach this task with some degree of trepidation. WOW - what a frustrating experience. I spent three hours in the shop last night hunched over it trying to get the knives alligned properly. I am using a dial-indicator with flat "foot" and magnetic base to set it. I eventually got it to the point where knives are within a deviation of .001 in height from each other and about the same across their width. However, this did not come without my uttering some words that I wouldn't want my wife or mom to hear. So, my questions are these;
1) Am I shooting for too much precision?
2) Do those magnetic jigs make it any easier?
3) Are there alternative, and less frustrating, ways to do it that someone can suggest?
Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post . . .
Larry