shimming jointer cutterhead

[Gil Liu]

Hi All,

I purchased a used Grizzly 8" jointer -- 3 knives, levers instead of handwheels, colored green top to bottom.

It looks like I need to shim the cutterhead on the side closest to the fence about 0.025"

I was looking at the Grizzly site for replacing standard cutterheads with indexable spiral cutterheads and read this in an online manual pdf:


"Note: Use the shims from your old cutterhead if available. If not available, newspaper is approximately 0.003" thick and will work for shimming (we don't recommend shimming more than 0.004" on either side, as this may affect how the bearing block seats in the casting)."

So, here are my questions:

1.) Am I foolish to try and shim the existing cutterhead slightly more than 5-times the recommended maximum for replacement indexable spiral cutterheads?

2.) If you have shimmed your cutterhead, how big do you cut the shims, how many do you use, and where do you place them? I was going to use two thumbnail sized ones on each side of the bearing block stud.

3.) What shim material would you use? I read on the old woodworking machines forum that someone used feeler gauges and simply broke them off. The feeler gauge that is sized for the gap that I'm addressing seems too thick to bend to the curved shape of the casting that holds the cutter.

Thanks all for your help!

Gil

[Jim McFarland]

Hi All,
....

3.) What shim material would you use? ...

No opinion on your 1st two questions but I've been satisfied with the sampler pack of brass shim stock from Lee Valley. You may be able to find it cheaper somewhere else but, in my case, if Lee Valley has it I usually don't bother looking elsewhere.

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...=1,43456,43407