Should I get this PM 60 jointer?

[Mark Rios]

This is up for auction in my area. Apparently a furniture manufacturer went out of business. The caption says that it is a PM 60. From the picture is looks to have been around awhile but I don't know how old it is. Is this a good one? What about the table warpage in older machine that some of you have mentioned in other post about jointers? I'm not too concerned about the looks as long as it works ok. If it needed work or parts though I wouldn't know what it would be worth. I get to check it out on Tuesday.

How much would be too much for this jointer. I don't where to stop bidding.

I'd appreciate any info and help I can get. Thanks very much.

[Dev Emch]

This is up for auction in my area. Apparently a furniture manufacturer went out of business. The caption says that it is a PM 60. From the picture is looks to have been around awhile but I don't know how old it is. Is this a good one? What about the table warpage in older machine that some of you have mentioned in other post about jointers? I'm not too concerned about the looks as long as it works ok. If it needed work or parts though I wouldn't know what it would be worth. I get to check it out on Tuesday.

How much would be too much for this jointer. I don't where to stop bidding.

I'd appreciate any info and help I can get. Thanks very much.

Nothing to phone home about. This is a Houdale/Powermatic and its pretty good but its not built as well as some of the larger jointers. This is the jointer that was used as a ginie pig in the FWW video on tuning up jointers.

I have found the overall design of these 8 inch jointers to be lacking. The bearings are barely over ABEC 1 meaning they are high quality electric motor bearings (62 series as I recall). Many of these had three knife heads and the cutting circle of all 8 inch jointers is really a bit small. The ideal cutting circle begins at about 4 inches. In newer versions of this jointer just prior to the Jet buy out, these jointers were souped up to 7200 RPM to compensate for this. ALso, the newer versions had much longer infeed tables.

The best jointers to look for are the 12 inch jointers. That little bump up from 8 to 12 in really picks up some nice features and gives you some options. If you can get a really good price on this jointer, then I would consider it as will perform pretty good but if I could hold out for a better made 12 inch jointer, that would be the ideal path to travel. And a used northfield 12 HD would be the super cat's meow. A 12 inch porter 300 would only confirm you have died and gone to heaven.

Best of luck and let us know what you find on tuesday. Make sure you check the knife count, run it if possible and look for bearing noise and vibration and see if there is any shim stock being used in the ways to hold the accuracy.

[Jamie Buxton]

What? You're passing on that 30" bandsaw?

[Jeff Singleton]

The PM 60 is a pretty good jointer if all you need to do is edge joint a board. It does not have the power to do much face jointing. I had one for about 10 years and put a Terminus cutterhead in it and it edge jointed great. The Terminus was about $400 and worth it. Like Dev said the Northfield is a very good jointer but you really can not compare a Jaquar to a Yugo. Northfields are industrial jointers and they are better then anything the Pacfic Rim has to offer. One of my friend has a Heavy Duty 12" Northfield for sale if your interested, don't know what he wants though. The Porter is in a class by itself. I used a 30" for a while and besides having to stretch a half mile to get to the fence it was great. If you have a shop that's as big as the Goodyear blimp hanger go for it, you need a lot of room. Me, I will stick with my stout 16" Wadkins with a 5" dia. cutterhead and skewed knife head. Easiest jointer to dial in dead flat. Good luck.

Jeff Singleton

[Mark Rios]

What? You're passing on that 30" bandsaw?

I thought about it Jamie but I would have to build a new shop around that thing. What a resaw though!!!!

[Dev Emch]

The PM 60 is a pretty good jointer if all you need to do is edge joint a board. It does not have the power to do much face jointing. I had one for about 10 years and put a Terminus cutterhead in it and it edge jointed great. The Terminus was about $400 and worth it. Like Dev said the Northfield is a very good jointer but you really can not compare a Jaquar to a Yugo. Northfields are industrial jointers and they are better then anything the Pacfic Rim has to offer. One of my friend has a Heavy Duty 12" Northfield for sale if your interested, don't know what he wants though. The Porter is in a class by itself. I used a 30" for a while and besides having to stretch a half mile to get to the fence it was great. If you have a shop that's as big as the Goodyear blimp hanger go for it, you need a lot of room. Me, I will stick with my stout 16" Wadkins with a 5" dia. cutterhead and skewed knife head. Easiest jointer to dial in dead flat. Good luck.

Jeff Singleton

Jeff, I agree with you but caution on the porter. The 300 was made in 12, 16, 20, 24, 30 and 48 inch widths. Never seen a 48 in porter but I know an outfit that sold knives for it so I know it exists.

At 24 inches, the porter becomes difficult to use. Even its shapely body begins to look overweight. So unless you really need a facer, I would tend to avoid it.

The 12 in version is identical in overall shaper but NOT FEATURES to the northfield 12 HD. The body of the 16 and 20 inch jointers are identical down to the last parts used. THe only difference is a set of wider tables and a longer cutter head yoke. This has the advantage of giving you 20 in in a 16 in footprint. My buddy had the nicest 12 in Porter I have ever seen and that is how I fell in love with them. The cutter head is 5 in in diameter on all porters which is larger than even the oliver and the northfield. His even had a knife grinder and honeing stone jig.

I wound up settling for one of the last Porter 300s made in about 1961. Mine is a 20 in version and its the finest jointer I have ever run. Every once in a while you find a machine that was designed by both an engineer and a woodworker and the design hits a home run. Examples are the Porter 300 jointer, the Oliver 125 tenoner, the Oliver 299 planer, the Kindt Collins spindle sander and late model 20 and 30 inch disc sanders and the wysong 284 chisel mortiser. There are others but this is the big list from the USA. Each design has significant features worthy of a design in excellence award.

Truth is, the northfield is no porter but its lately, its been rather prolific. You can get an excellent deal on a 12 in northfield for less than a grizzly 12 in jointer. And I must warn you, once you run one of the larger jointers, it will become your goto tool.

[Jeff Singleton]

Dev and I must think alike when it comes to woodworking machines. I have used Master disc and spindle sanders as a patternmaker and I have two Master 24" disc's and maybe getting a SP-2 (Master's spindle sander) to replace my State T-5. The only drawback to the SP-2 is it's very short oscillation. I have use Oliver 299's and they are probably the best small 24" planer made, if can can call 2800 lbs. small. It's a timeless design. Although I do not own a Porter they are the standard for which all other jointers are compared. I had a Porter "B" 12" that was a beauty with a 5" cutterhead but I just didn't have enough room for it so I sold it. If a PM 60 is what you want, get it and try to wear it out. If you like what you see in your price range go for it.

Jeff Singleton

[Dev Emch]

Dev and I must think alike when it comes to woodworking machines. I have used Master disc and spindle sanders as a patternmaker and I have two Master 24" disc's and maybe getting a SP-2 (Master's spindle sander) to replace my State T-5. The only drawback to the SP-2 is it's very short oscillation. I have use Oliver 299's and they are probably the best small 24" planer made, if can can call 2800 lbs. small. It's a timeless design. Although I do not own a Porter they are the standard for which all other jointers are compared. I had a Porter "B" 12" that was a beauty with a 5" cutterhead but I just didn't have enough room for it so I sold it. If a PM 60 is what you want, get it and try to wear it out. If you like what you see in your price range go for it.

Jeff Singleton

Opps, I made a boo boo. I referenced a 20 inch Kindt Collins Master disc sander. That is not correct. Its actually 24 inches. I do know that they made a 30 inch with a hydraulic table as that is the one I own. Jeff, did you by any chance snag the wadkin jointer from the Wisconsin Patternworks auction in Racine? This would have been about 2 years ago?
They had a ton of stuff. Several oliver patternshop lathes, an oliver 299 planer, one or two wadkin 16 inch jointers, a bunch of 24 inch master sanders, a master spindle sander, etc. All on a second floor building with brick walls and oak flooring. The largest pattern shop I have ever seen other than that Naval shop up in washington state somewhere. That was the king kong of all pattern shops. You name it, they had it. They even had a twin arbor JDR (?) tannewitz dual arbor saw.

[Jeff Singleton]

Hay Dev, I have had my Wadkins for about 10 years. My buddy from Columbus went to the Racine auction and snaged a Master 24" disc and I think 2 Master SP-2 spindle sanders. I don't know if you knew or not but Kindt-Collins only made 62 of the 30" Masters and thats both series. The older series had the holes in the table for dust collection and a dust spout at about 10:00 on the disc. I would love to have one of those beast. Also about the disc sanders, I absolutely hate the PSA disc, they always bubble for some stupid reason and are they ever hard to get off, you have to use a heat gun sometimes. I prefer the Master or Freeman disc cement, takes longer to brush on both surfaces but it sticks better and comes off a lot easier. I luck out when I bought my Master, it came with 25 nonPSA disc but they have the 1" center hole and it came with the 1" rod.

Jeff Singleton

[Dev Emch]

Hay Dev, I have had my Wadkins for about 10 years. My buddy from Columbus went to the Racine auction and snaged a Master 24" disc and I think 2 Master SP-2 spindle sanders. I don't know if you knew or not but Kindt-Collins only made 62 of the 30" Masters and thats both series. The older series had the holes in the table for dust collection and a dust spout at about 10:00 on the disc. I would love to have one of those beast. Also about the disc sanders, I absolutely hate the PSA disc, they always bubble for some stupid reason and are they ever hard to get off, you have to use a heat gun sometimes. I prefer the Master or Freeman disc cement, takes longer to brush on both surfaces but it sticks better and comes off a lot easier. I luck out when I bought my Master, it came with 25 nonPSA disc but they have the 1" center hole and it came with the 1" rod.

Jeff Singleton

Actually they only had one SP-2 sander which is the sander I showed in the SMC shop tour #3. Got most of the spindles but I am missing the 4 inch one. I have been working on machining a replacement from brass in my spare time as I like brass better than aluminum. Your right about those pesky good for nothing PSA discs. Oliver used to sell Sando Cement. Right now, I am using the kindt collins formula. Works great and less filling. Also the PSA discs are significantly more expensive. I get my discs from A&H abrasives. They are made from a heavy duty fabric backing and use a blue Zircona Alumina abrasive which is better than the old school garnett. The only one more durable is ceramic aluminia and its used for metalworking as well. Dont need that. Without the PSA goop, these discs are about 1/4 the cost of paper garnett PSA discs.

The table on the master 30 has no holes. The last ones built had an electric table lift. There were actually three generations made and the first two generations had hydraulic table lifts. There is a small hydraulic power cell in the base that you have to turn on. Then there is a log splitter like ram handle that moves in and out. This lifts the table up and down. There is a single dust collection port on the back side of the machine. There is also a DC plenum snout on the base of the table knee which pulls dust off the bottom half of the wheel and from below the table. The design is rock proof!

In regards to spindle sanders, I have only found two that I truely like. These are the oliver 381 and the kindt collins 2S-P. The KC master sander is more refined than the 381 and better for smaller more precise work. But the 381 is a brute. It has a longer stroke and you can crank the spindle up and down a bit to optimize which section of the cylinder your using. But the inner workings are not for the faint of heart. The motor has a hollow rotor that decends into the transmission osscilation gear box hung below the motor. A standard worm gear follower arangement then takes this pure rotary motion and converts it into rotary and oscillatory motion and sends this motion up a solid shaft THROUGH the hollow rotor shaft, through the motor and up to the table. In older models, you had a morse taper socket. In newer models, you have a thread on spindle. Personally, I prefer the morse taper sockets better than the thread on spindle sockets. All in all, a heavy brutus of a sander and one that can really get some heavy duty precise work done in a hurry.

[Jeff Singleton]

The one patternshop I worked at had a SP2 right beside a Oliver spindle sander. The Oliver was a brute like you said and with the huge table it was easy to sand big patterns. There is a n aluminum foundry has their own patter shop here in Barberton that has a 30" master disc and it has holes in the table for dust collection and the owner said he bought it new like that. I know Kindt-Collins would set up those sanders any way you wanted them and theirs also had the hydraulic raise and lower. A friend of mine has a SP2 with a weird top that has a diamond grid mild in it and the only thing I could thing of was that it was a tool and die machine, it did have the carbide spindles in 1/8" and 3/16". If I make down to the aluminum foudry anytime soon I will snap a few kodaks for reference. They also have a Oliver 22 lathe, COMPLETE at that. Big floor plates with a tailstock and a boatload of accessories. I don't think they have used it in 10 years. That's a crime in my book, I think the old girl needs hear bearings spun again.

Jeff Singleton