Finally! Success aligning jointer

Just thought I'd post a tip on jointer alignment.

I have a Jet 6" jointer... probably about 15 years old or so (the old blue color). I bought it used, and it was perfectly aligned when I got it. For my first project, I glued up an 8/4 cherry table top with perfect glue lines.

Life got busy, and I didn't use the jointer for another project for almost a year. Some surface rust had accumulated on the tables... from that point on, for reasons I could never determine, couldn't get the darn thing aligned. I tried everything.

It seemed that I'd get it aligned, then adjust the depth of cut only to find it was out of whack again. I wasted hours and hours and hours on this cursed machine.

Fed up, I began trolling craigslist looking for a replacement. When it came down to it, I really didn't want to spend the money, so I decided to give this jointer one last chance.

I completely disassembled the thing. I took each of the beds completely apart and was shocked to see how much saw dust and dried out grease was in the dovetail ways. I carefully cleaned and lubricated everything, reassembled, re-set the knives, tightened the jib screws, and much to my surprise, the thing is dead on perfect now. I'm elated.

So if you're having problems like me, you might consider giving your machine a serious cleaning and lube job.

Pete, congrats on your success.

Good to know and thanks for posting Pete!:)

And.........you became better acquainted with your machine during the process!

That is a strange story. Even with the accumulated crud,if it worked well before,and hadn't been LIFTED,or somehow had the tables jerked upwards,how could it have been out of alignment? A mystery.

I'm with George on this one. However sometimes I take something apart to fix it and nothing is evident, yet when it is reassembled it is good again. ( I have a box of stuff that is exactly the opposite though.)

yeah, it's possible that the grease and sawdust didn't cause the problem. But there was a lot in there.

Who knows what really happened. All I can say is that it's working great now. I'm not going to touch it!