Hey, if yours had springs under the knives consider yourself lucky. I
just bought a six-inch piece of Asian scrap metal that had neither
jack screws nor springs. Try setting the knives in one of those if
you want to have some fun. I even found some tiny springs, modified
them slightly and tried to fit them under the knives while applied
pressure and attempted to tighten the gibs. It didn't work so I
finally broke down and went out and found one of those magnetic
devices, jointer pal or whatever it is called. With that I finally
got them set, more or less. After I locked them I put a gauge on and
they were up to four thousandths off. I suppose I could have played
around a bit more and reduced that to one or two thousandths but I
think four thousandths is adequate unless you are more preoccupied
with precision measurement than with getting on with what you are
doing.

I have a DJ 20 up north where I live most of the year and I use the
Makita wet grinder to sharpen both my 12-inch planer and my 8-inch
jointer blades. I didn't bring it with me to Florida and after
finally getting the knives set in the Chinese devil I discovered that
they really should have been honed while I had them out. Now I'm
going to have to hone them in situ, something I've never done before.
It makes me wonder if I should get one of those jointer honing
devices. Anyone tried one of these things?. Do they really work
better than wrapping a piece of waxed paper around a good oil stone
and going after them with that?

You know if you are used to working with well-tuned, quality tools and
you find yourself forced to work with junk your admiration for those
who are capable of doing great work with cheap machinery really goes
up a notch or two. But then there are the Neanderthals who disdain
all machinery and turn out truly exquisite work. Or, just look at
what was done in the 18th C. Today I used my old Stanley (78 I
believe) rabbiting plane because I felt I could do better with it than
trying to rabbit on the Chinese devil. It was almost as fast and I
didn't screw up the piece of teak I was working on as I might have on
the jointer. If you are not trying to make a living at it there is
really something to be said for the pleasure of using a well-tuned
plane.


On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:51:33 -0500, "C & S"
wrote:

If they have jack screws like the YC-8J it is not a nightmare. Just pull up
a chair and get comfy in front of the machineIt took me about 20 minutes.
The only tool employed was a straightedge, the supplied open-end wrench and
the supplied allen wrench.. I used the jack screw to lift the knife so that
it would touch and move the straight edge (resting on the outfeed table and
overhangling the cutterhead) as little as possible when turing the cutter
head. I got it down to where the cutter head advanced the straight edge
1/8". I could not make it less w/o going to zero. It was about a 10-degree
turn of the jack screw between 0 and 1/8" advance of the straight edge.

Test cuts were spot on.

The Chinese 6"er that it replaced *was* a nightmare. It had nothing but
springs under the knife, and a crude
jug to hold the knife a constant height above the cutter head.

-Steve