I'm fairly new to using a jointer and have been having some real issues with my Ridgid Jointer this week when face jointing. Just about every board I run over it becomes twisted.
Here is a description of what is happening:
I make a 1st pass and it almost always results in the same thing
As I make more and more passes, it gets worse and the board is now tapered with the thin end at the infeed side and the thicker end at the outfeed side.
- Material taken off on the infeed end furthest away from the fence
- Nothing taken off of the infeed end closest to the fence - the no material varies about 1-3 inches out from the fence.
- no contact made with knives when the board extends about 2-2.5 onto the outfeed table.
- occassionally some contact made with knives at the rear of the board.
- The majority of material is taken off on the end furthest away from the fence with no material being taken off of the side closest to the fence.
I've checked that the knives are aligned with the outfeed table and that is okay. The fence is parallel with the infeed/outfeed table and when the infeed table is parallel with the outfeed table. This was all done with a straight edge and a sqare (I may be buying a new straight edge and square as I accidently broke the good ones 2 weeks ago in the cold and the ones I used here were cheapos).
This is really becoming frustrating because I didn't have this problem a month ago. It seems like something changed.
The boards I'm using are relatively flat to start off with so I'm pretty sure it's not the material. I tried cherry, poplar and soft maple and am seeing the same results with all of them. They start out as 4/4 boards, but are getting as thin as 2/4 before I toss them aside and start over. I'm now at the point just using poplar because I'm tired of ruining good boards.
I think the twisting is coming from me flipping the board end-to-end and then jointing from the opposite end, but I'm not certain.
When I'm feeding the boards, I keep the feed rate relatively consistent and once I get about 1 foot of the board on the outfeed table, I move my downward pressure onto the outfeed table and feed it from there. Am I doing something wrong there?
If you have any good resources to tune up jointers, please pass them along. I have to get this resolved since I cannot do anything with all the rough lumber until it's properly jointed.
Thanks for all the help.