Issue with table beds on Delta 6" Jointer

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I posted about this before.
I spent hours and hours on an old Davis and Wells 6 inch long bed. The former owner had given up on it after having the beds surface ground. It was still wonky. I eventually discovered that there was a tiny bit of casting on the gib ways that had not been properly milled away at the factory. When the infeed was raised for a fine cut it rode up on the casting blob and one side of the in-feed bed lifted. Unfortunately the P.O. had the grinding done when the infeed was sitting on the casting blob. I filed the blob off and shimmed the ways with brass and was able to get it working quite well, then gave it back to him.

A level is not as good as a machinist straight edge for troubleshooting a jointer.


from the old thread Last edited by Maurice Mcmurry; 06-16-2022 at 7:53 AM.
I was "gifted" a Davis and Wells 6 inch jointer. The previous owner said it was messed up. He had tried to "fix" it by having the in-feed and out-feed tables surface ground. It was indeed messed up. Unfortunately the problem was a manufacturing flaw. A bit of casting where the in-feed met the base had not been milled. The un-milled bump did not allow the two haves of the gib ways to nest. I eventually got it to function (in one spot) with a whole lot of shim stock. I was excited about the machine and could see that they are top quality.

[mark ahlenius]

Thanks Ken, will look around and see how much this will cost me.

mark

[mark ahlenius]

Thanks Maurice. Quite an involved repair but worth it in the end.

[mark ahlenius]

Thanks Cameron. I’ll see if I need to go down this path. Right now I’d rather not lose another ~1/2 inch of my jointer width. But this is far cheaper and easier than having to take it apart and find a machinist.

[Cameron Wood]

Thanks Cameron. I’ll see if I need to go down this path. Right now I’d rather not lose another ~1/2 inch of my jointer width. But this is far cheaper and easier than having to take it apart and find a machinist.

Yeah, I lost maybe 1/4" of width in the deal, but it works well now.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Here is a link for the manual Ken Fitzgerald mentioned.

https://www.ereplacementparts.com/de...655_13888.html

If the fence is warped you could glue 1/8 inch masonite to it with contact cement. Lap the masonite, then glue on formica. My homemade Biesemeryer fence copy for the table saw was faced with thin pine, then lapped and covered with formica. The pine and formica are glued on with Gorilla glue. It is dead flat.
For troubleshooting the Davis and Wells I used a feeler gauge, a bright light, and real good straight edge to check the infeed table, the outfeed table, and the fence, I did not find the flaw until I checked everything several times with the beds in several positions. There is also a way to check for flat with a dial indicator and math. That makes my brain hurt. Dan Gelbart starts talking about the reversal method for checking flatness at 22:45 in this video.

[mark ahlenius]

Mark,

If the fence needs to be jointed, take it to a local machine shop. That is something they should easily be able to do.

Hi all,

I wanted to give a quick update (and thanks for all the suggestions) to this post on the resolution. I did end up taking the fence to a few machine shops near me. Most of these places (Chicago suburbs) have a minimum fee to do work. I went with the 3rd place as their price was the lowest and what the described they would do seemed to make the most sense. The problem was that the back of the fence was not flat, so They first had to grind that flat to be able to put in on their large (and I mean large) grinder. The grinder had a magnetic base to hold the piece while the ground it.

I had detected that the fence cupped out towards the front, and the owner told me it did indeed but it also had a twist to it. He basically got it flat within a few thousandths of an inch. It now sits pretty straight to the outfeed bed, but there’s still a small deviation in the bed which I will live with. So for not its much better than it was!

Thanks again!

Finished product below.

[Cameron Wood]

Looks good- don't forget the paste wax.

[Ronald Blue]

Looks like they knew what they were doing. Cast iron has to be flooded with coolant to or it will do ugly things when grinding. As Cameron said wax it now and enjoy.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Glad you were able to get it flattened Mark! As suggested, wax it and enjoy!