16 inch jointer

ken lutes

Member
Messages
98
Location
Winchester Ky.
Last March I bought a F. and J. 16 inch jointer. I listed some pictures of it last March. Well its been a busy year and I am just now getting back to redoing it. It came out with babbit brgs. A machinist friend of mine (he is the one with the horizonal boring mill large enough to handle the job) has offered to help me retrofit it with ball brgs. So with that offer how could I not accept. That will make a good old machine a great old machine. Cant wait!!!!
 
Ken,

Sounds like you have a good jointer there. but, maybe you should reconsider replacement of the babitt bearings. I'd ask about that over on the OWWM.org forum. Those guys can give you some good advice on that machine.

Just sayin'.

Oh, remember,
"no "recent" pictures, never happened".

Aloha, Tony
 
Tony, if I understand Ken's post, his machinist friend is going to do just that...replace the babbit bearings with ball bearings.

Ken, sounds like an aircraft carrier waiting to happen. We'll be expecting pics. :)
 
vaughn,
if i read tony`s post right he`s suggesting asking over at owwm about keeping the babbits.
the tolerances of well poured babbits will exceed all but very costly abec 5-7 type bearings..
the main benefit of working over an older machine would be replacing a square cutterhead.....and i haven`t read that ken intends to do that?
 
re

The square cutter head has already been replaced. My friend has rebuilt, designed and built machinery professionally all of his career. In this area if you have had him to work on a piece of equipment it just doesnt get any better. He is retired now and I consirder myself locky to get him to work on it. We discussed repouring the babbit bearings. Which he has no problem with and recommends as a good option. Tod is correct there are a lot of high end equipment that runs on babbit bearings new and old. I have poured babbit for tablesaws and jointers years ago. But for some reason I am leaning toward ball bearingd on this piece of equipment. Talk to me if you really disagree and tell me why. That is why I posted this for your information. I will post some pictures when finished which ever the out come.
 
ken,
if your machinist friend can make good clean caps to hold quality off the shelf bearings i`d go that route for two reasons;
1) resale (most folks are scared of babbits nowadays)
2) ease of servicability.

if you got a few extra bucks look at the tersa heads.
 
re

Tod those are the two main reasons that I am going to ball brg.
I have not heard of the heads that you mentioned. I will try to search them.
 
Tersa heads, as in tersa cutters, allow you to change the blades in about one minute, fully aligned. Suddenly it becomes practical to change to a HSS cutter for a final cut on figured wood, chrome cutters for rough planing, and carbide cutters (my primary knives). I have a 3 cutter Tersa head, and do the complete change in under 3 minutes. GREAT
 
Tod, you're right. I misunderstood what Tony was suggesting. :doh: Sounds like Ken and you both have it figured out better than me. (Pretty easy to do when it comes to machinery.) :rolleyes:
 
I am in the keep the babbitt camp. With just a little maintence (keep them lubed and once ever few years remove some shims from the caps) they will out live you. They work perfectly and have no real draw backs that I see for the average woodworker. I run the Great Pumpkin in babbit with the square head. My mortiser is babbit and probably some others in my shop I am not thinking of. Oh yea, the 30" bandsaw is babbit. I think that is is?

Each to his own, but I really hate to see an old machine converted. If your in a factory setting maybe, changing out a bearing is quicker than two days to repour babbit. But other than that I see it as downgrade. A lot of work for very little (or no) gain.
 
work in progress

I thought that i would give you an up date on my jointer project. We have the bearing housing lined bored for the ball bearings. We are going to set the motor up for direct coupling. I will post pictures later. I believe ti is going to make one fine jointer.
 
...We are going to set the motor up for direct coupling. ...

Direct coupling? As in the motor shaft coupled directly to the cutter shaft? I sure wouldn't do that - or would certainly check why this isn't the normal construction for a jointer.

Thinking of saws, the cheap table-top construction site saws have the blade arbor directly connected to the motor, so all the motor vibration and mis-alignment as the load changes are transmitted to the blade. The better saws are always belt driven, which I have assumed was, in part, to provide isolation. I would expect the same in the jointer.
 
A lot of the older jointers were direct drive :dunno:

The thing with direct drive is you are limited to the motor speed for your cutter head speed, this could very well be OK with the right motor, but with a belt and pulley system, you could change the speed of the cutter head with various pulley sizes.

One thing that does come to mind in this example....... 16"....... SIXTEEN INCHES :eek:

Think about that for a second, if you are jointing a 16" wide board, maybe a direct drive set up is essential, as there would be little power loss, compared to a pulley and belt syslem :dunno:

At the very least, I'll be looking forward to the pictures! :wave:
 
jointer

Ok it has been a while since I posted this, it has been a busy year. Well I finally got the big boat home. It runs smoooooootttthhhhhhh. I am glad we went with direct drive. I am pleased with it. It actually ran smoother and quite than my delta 8 inch. We were able to adjust the infeed table and out feed table to within .003 over the total length and area. great. We weighed the thing 1280lbs. As soon as I get it cleaned up and painted I post some pictures. Now to sharpen the blades.
 
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