Should I be disappointed?

[John Ziebron]

After my move last year I'm slowly getting my new shop (pole barn) ready as a woodworking shop. And because I have more room I'm upgrading some of my machines. I recently sold my 6 inch Powermatic long bed jointer and just took delivery of a Grizzly G0490X 8 inch jointer. Spent parts of a couple days getting it setup and was getting anxious to try it out as this is my first machine with a spiral head. So this afternoon I finally ran a few pieces of wood through it and am a little disappointed, and surprised at the results. I ran some small pieces of poplar and hard maple. Jointing the edges was great. Face jointing flattened the surface really well but I was left with tiny ridges running the length of the boards. In a 6 inch wide board there were 4 ridges, each about 1 1/4 inches apart but the spacing was not evenly distributed. Granted the ridges could easily be knocked down with a quick sanding or a scraper. But knife planers don't have this issue unless there is a nick in the knives. And this is what the troubleshooting section of the manual talked too as well. So I carefully checked all 4 rows of carbide inserts to make sure none were nicked or chipped and even made sure all were tight. Is this the way it is with spiral cutterheads or is there something I'm doing wrong or set up wrong?

[glenn bradley]

But knife planers don't have this issue unless there is a nick in the knives.

Just to clarify, there is a proud ridge left lengthwise similar to a nicked knife? If this is so, there would have to be an aligned nick in several inserts as they overlap. This would be caused by an actual nick.

If instead you are seeing the trails sometimes left by spiral heads, these are more visual than physical and you should barely be able to detect them by hand, if at all.

Wood does not come off a jointer, knived or insert-head, ready to use. The effect is just different. Knived machines often leave some tear-out or the familiar scalloping that comes from moving the stock too quickly. Sometimes we are so used to seeing this that the different variant from the insert head looks odd.

The trails still stop me sometimes and I have had spiral heads for years. The normal follow up steps to making something out of these milled boards eliminates the appearance in my experience.

If there are indeed raised lines similar to a nicked knife I would track it down and inspect the inserts in that area of the head. I will also mention a phenomenon that is not inherently obvious . . . A piece of material stuck in the head that prevents the cutting edge from doing its job will leave a raised area. It would seem that such a thing should leave a gouge but, when I see this behavior I can quickly track it down to a piece of material stuck under the leading edge of a cutter.

[Peter Aeschliman]

If those ridges are straight and run the entire length of the board continuously, then I recommend taking another look at the inserts to make sure they aren't nicked. The cutters are usually spread out in such a way that each row is offset slightly to the one before it. So if only one knife was off or misaligned, the one behind it would take care of what it left behind. So you probably wouldn't get a continuous ridge all the way down the board if it was an alignment issue.

Look carefully at where the ridges are happening and use that to guide you to the offending cutters. Try turning the cutters in those areas 90 degrees and see if it goes away. If it does, then most likely you have nicked cutters.

[John Ziebron]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I can definitely tell you that there are no nicked cutters. Remember too that this is a brand new machine and this is the first time it's been used. And the ridges are certainly more than just obvious. You really catch your fingernail when you run it across the boards. I will have more time to play with it tomorrow and see if I can determine a cause.

[Allan Speers]

John, one more thing to look at is the tension on the inserts. Don't just assume the factory got it right. Yours might have been assembled on a Friday evening, just before the factory closed, or whatever.

Get a good torque wrench (You'll need one eventually, anyway. Remove all the inserts. Clean the head carefully. re-install the inserts and make sure they are all exactly at the recommended torque. (That means they are at the same height, unless you've got a bad insert.)

There's a very god chance this will sure your issue.

[Dan Hahr]

I'd be calling Grizzly. Ridges from a freshly jointed board makes a jointer worthless. It sounds as though the inserts are not spaced properly or undersized.

Yes, I'd be extremely disappointed.

Dan

[Peter Quinn]

Can you snap a picture?

[Cary Falk]

When I put a Byrd head in my jointer I had to remove all of the cutters and retorque all of the inserts before I was happy with the cut.

[Ronald Blue]

I'd be calling Grizzly. Ridges from a freshly jointed board makes a jointer worthless. It sounds as though the inserts are not spaced properly or undersized.

Yes, I'd be extremely disappointed.

Dan

Call them and then check all the inserts after they request you do that vs going ahead and doing that as you will need to know the procedure sooner or later anyway? I consider doing that just doing what you probably should do anyway. If it had knives it would be perfectly normal to check them to make sure they are all properly set and checking the inserts is the same thing. I would flip the board end to end to get the jointed side up and then you can inspect the cutter head closely where the ridges match up. But ultimately it probably would be best practice to go through all of them removing, cleaning , re-installing with the proper torque and checking the results again. If you still have the ridges then contacting Grizzly for help/advice is appropriate and expected. To me this falls under dialing it in versus a manufacturing flaw and until you re-seat all the insets you don't know what you are dealing with.

[John Ziebron]

Shown below is a picture of the maple board I face jointed. I adjusted the contrast and kept the resolution up high enough that hopefully you'll be able to see the ridges. I don't have a way I can think of to measure their height but, as I mentioned earlier, your fingernail really catches on them. I tried to call Grizzly tech support this morning but discovered they only operate Mon - Fri. Based on what you guys have mentioned I am thinking about removing all the inserts, cleaning the head thoroughly and reinstalling the inserts. But I don't want to do that until I talk to Grizzly. Like many of you I am one of those people that check all the settings and adjustments on a new machine before turning on the power to try it out. This is a parallelogram jointer and so I checked the beds. The outfeed table wasn't too bad but the infeed table was quite a bit off. Grizzly uses 4 elliptical bushings for each bed for adjustment. Their rotational position is held in place by a small set screw. And, for some reason, they have a second set screw on top of the first. Possibly to help keep sawdust out? In making my bed adjustments I discovered that 6 of the 8 set screw were not tightened down on the bushing. Not a big deal if you are adjusting the beds anyway, but I am a little surprised at the lack of quality control in this area. But the beds and fence are ground flat and true so overall I'm happy with this machine. Of course, I'm being optimistic about getting the ridge issue resolved.

maple1a.jpg

[Ken Fitzgerald]

John,

It's not an uncommon thing to put a 2nd set screw on top of the first set screw. It keeps the 1st one from backing out due to vibration during normal operation. I saw that technique used in much more expensive medical equipment like CT scanners manufactured here in the US.

I would advise trying to remove, clean all inserts and their "beds". Then reinstall them with proper torque. Torque is important to prevent breaking the cutters. They are normally brittle. It's the nature of the material.

[John TenEyck]

Same here. I would expect a new machine to arrive ready to run as it was intended to w/o having to do what the factory was supposed to do before they shipped it. You get what you pay for, and Grizzly has to compromise somewhere in order to offer machines at the prices they do.

John

[Peter Quinn]

Not sure what your expectation should be. I put a byrd head on an old 8" DJ 20, and had none of those types of lines. They look like either nicks or spots where the cutters don't over lap each other. When new as delivered the byrd head was pretty flawless. The surface had a very slight scalloped look in a glancing light, sands out almost instantly with 120G orbital sander. After changing inserts I've had a more pronounced scallops, most likely due to seats not properly cleaned or set screws not properly torqued. They recommend (byrd does anyway) setting the torque with a very accurate torque screw driver, and most of them are well over $100, I have not made that plunge yet. To receive a new machine and have those lines would disappoint me, the solution may be in your hands regarding cleaning seats, checking torque. I would also inspect the carbide very closely, run a thumb nail cautiously over the cutting edges where the offending lines are occurring , rotate the head and check each insert. Could be the inserts have some burs or nicks that aren't so obvious to the eye but can be felt with a fingernail and could be leaving those lines.

On the bright side you don't have any tearout which is much harder to remedy than those lines.

[Allan Speers]

When I put a Byrd head in my jointer I had to remove all of the cutters and retorque all of the inserts before I was happy with the cut.

Exactly. And as I wrote above, make sure everything is really clean underneath the inserts as well.

this is a very common problem / solution.


Of course, one must be realistic, too. Most of Grizzly's carbide heads are spiral, but not Shelix. That's why they cost a little less, and there is (reportedly) a subtle difference in the finish they give.

[Scott DelPorte]

Hi John, I expect you will be able to get it resolved. I have had two machines with Grizzly spiral cutters and one Hammer with a spiral cutter. They are slightly different designs, but the results from all three are basically equivalent. You can see small lines if you hold it at the right angle, but you cant feel ridges. I put a final surface on boards with a smoothing plane after dimensioning with the jointer or planer, and the lines come out very easily. I would estimate they are less than 0.001 inch deep, but have never measured it. Here is a picture of a piece of walnut after going through a Grizzly spiral cutter. You can see the tiny lines, but you cant feel them. I think you should be able to get a similar surface finish from your machine once you get it sorted out.
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