'bout' ready to give up on jointer

[Sam Stephens]

the effect of having your outfeed table too low (~0.005") relative to the knives (i.e. knives too high) causes a taper meaning that w/ repeated passes, you never hear the last few inches (or more) of the board being planed. So of course you continue to pass the board over the jointer trying to get a flat face, yet never seem to joint the last foot or few inches. And yes, this board is not flat. It's kind of the opposite of snipe. The terminology is typically referred to as cutting a taper, b/c when viewed in relation to the other face, whether they were precisely parallel or not to start, repeated passes will cause a very obvious taper on the jointed face as you remove material from one end but less and less from the other end as you pass the board over the jointer. But again, that face is not flat so yes, the jointer would not be setup correctly in this instance. Raise the outfeed table a hair or two and try again. Mine has shifted on me before, perhaps a temp change or someone banged it w/o mentioning it to me. It's not an uncommon problem and is easily remedied by raising the table. Ruler trick, dial indicator, etc. many ways to check it.

HTH,
Sam

[Myk Rian]

I had/have a 6" Craftsman jointer also, about 30 years old and it works great....now. A pain to align, but make sure the infeed and outfeed tables are parallel in both directions. Take your time and once aligned it is good.

Al

I have a 6" Cman, w/adjustable out feed.
The best use I have found for it is as weight, in the back of my truck.

[Maurice Arney]

I had/have a 6" Craftsman jointer also, about 30 years old and it works great....now. A pain to align, but make sure the infeed and outfeed tables are parallel in both directions. Take your time and once aligned it is good.

Al

That's why you have a good machine. Mine is only 2 years old. Yours was built when Sears sold quality products. Mine was built just recently (in China) after Sears decided they didn't want to be bothered with all those pesky customers any more. They are on a self destruct mission.

[eugene thomas]

I think sears craftsman power tools where bad way before the china effect

[Julie Moriarty]

There was a time (decades ago) when I bought Craftsman tools almost exclusively. I buy nothing from sears anymore... Most of it is junk. Eventually, all of my Sears tools wil be replaced. Maybe the jointer is next.

The last two large Crapsman power tools I have are now sitting in the garage collecting dust. One of them is a 6" jointer. It worked fine for years but after a while I started seeing a bow in the edges. I took the thing completely apart, cleaned everything then reassembled it. It took me about 4 hours. It worked great for about a week but then the bowing problem started again. Rather then spend another 4 hours for maybe 20 minutes of actual use, it went up the stairs and into the garage and will either be sold for very cheap or given away to some industrious soul. I do my jointing now with a Lie-Nielsen #7 jointer. It burns no watts but a lot of calories.

[Mike Cogswell]

Is it acraftsman that you cant adjust the outfeed table up and down? I know a lot of the craftsman jointers are like that and I have found that it is impossible to set the knives right in order to get a non tapered cut. Jared

I have a Craftsman 6" jointer with a fixed outfeed that I've used for close to 30 years. It certainly isn't impossible to avoid a tapered cut - you just need to pay attention setting the blades to make sure they are exactly the same height as the outfeed at their highest point.

[Ken Higginbotham]

My bad if somebody already commented on this but when you put both sides of the table in the same plane is everything flat end to end?