HF 7" Jointer owners: How do you like your jointer?

The motor never worked. HF was not able to support it . This was partially
my fault as I did not try to use it until a couple months after purchase and
the packaging had already been discarded. Lesson learned.

Eventually I put an old sears table saw motor on it and made a home made
base. The bed was a little shorter than most 6's and I as unable to find 7"
knives except from HF and those were worth less than the 5-cent deposit on
the aluminum can from which they were pressed.

With a new motor and 6" freud knives it actually performed pretty well for
me for about 7 years. I recently upgraded to an eight.

Would you buy one again?

No.

How hard is it to adjust the knives?

Maddening. meditate first, then be prepared to spend about an hour. They
provide a basic jig, but the knives rest in little springs, you have to hold
the knives down with the jig (against the spring) while you snug up the
bolts with your other hand. That's not too tough... it's crossing your toes
and praying that the snugging the bolt doesn't shuft the knife position that
makes it tricky.

I just changed the blades on my YorkCraft YC-8J two days ago (it's very
fresh in my memory). It's still very fussy, but jack screws are a much
better system, because you can snug the bolts eough to provide just a bit of
friction and the use the jack screws to push the knife up to the proper
height.

It took me about 20 minutes to reinstall 3 knives.

Is there a DC port?

I don't recall, as I made my own base.

How was it shipped? Can two people wrestle it off of the truck without
a lift gate?

Common carrier, Yes around 160 lbs.


They have it on sale for $219, which makes it interesting to me.

Oddly, one thing that was uniqiely good about that machine was the unusual
fence locking took place at the end of the infeed table. Consequently, the
machine has a rather shallow footprint. Most other machines have a rack and
pinion to set fence position that extends almost a foot behind base of the
machine. That makes it eneficient to position the machine against a wall..

Cheers,

Steve



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