Sorry for the lengthy description.
I have a 6” Ridgid Jointer Planner, Model JP06101. This is a tool I purchased new a couple years ago, in an unopened box, at a very good price, from an individual as a private sale. He swears to have purchased it legitimately from HD, yet did not have a sales receipt. His reason for selling was: it was a gift & wanted to get a better J/P for his shop, which I can attest 1st hand was much better shop than mine. I attempted to register the J/P for the Ridgid Lifetime Service Agreement, but was unable to do so despite pictures of the unopened box & all the original packaging – because of no receipt.
So I have this J/P which I cannot use satisfactorily, despite reading/following instructions carefully& watching numerous videos.
- I very carefully set up the J/P as instructed & installed the knives to (0.000” to -0.001”) relative to the out-feed (OF) table.
- The cutter body is 1/16” below the OF table
- Co-planarity of the (IF) table (slightly lowered) relative to the OF table when standing at the operating position is:
- Far left corner (-0.019”) Far right corner (-0.005”)
- Near left corner (-0.019”) Near right corner (-0.014”)
When using the J/P to face joint I focus on keeping downward pressure on the leading part of the wood when over the OF table, letting the following part of the wood “float”, doing its own thing. The result is always a “tapered thickness” whereby the thickness of the wood is significantly less on the fence side than the near side, and with a taper running the length of the wood. I’ve had an experienced woodworking buddy try his hand & his results were the same. He even tried edge jointing the piece against the fence (90° to OF table) to edge joint. Over a 4” wide board it was out of square ~ 1/16”.
I’m thinking that since the outboard end of the IF table is higher (0.014” fence side / 0.005” near side) than at the cutter head it is influencing the cutting action despite holding the wood down firmly to the OF table. There are no leveling adjustments for the IF table, only gibs on the fence side. I was thinking of shimming on top of the dovetails as needed to improve co-planarity, but with the IF table 22” long & the dovetail extending only 7” from the cutter head, that would require ~ 1/3 of the shim thickness. This causes me to thick that shimming that close to the cutter head would just screw everything up.
I attempted to resolve this with a Ridgid tech guy, but after a couple of phone calls to him, he wouldn’t answer his messages. So now I’m hoping some of you experienced WWs may have some insight & suggestions on how to resolve this. I really don’t want to sell this J/P as this would just pass on the problem to the next guy.
Any suggestions?