Knife setting jig for planer/thicknesser

heimlaga · 9 Mar 2013

I have always used a wooden straightedge to set knives in the 24" cutterhead of my planer/thicknesser but as I work semiprofessionally theese days I have started pondering about whether it would be worth getting a pair of knife setting jigs to speed up knife changing. The head is a normal gibbed two knife head about 100mm in diameter with depth adjustment screws that act against the back edge of the knife and are turned from the opposite side of the head.

Do you have any oppinions about good/bad jig designs? How much time do a pair of jigs actually save compared to the old way of doing it with straightedge and screwdriver?

carlb40 · 9 Mar 2013

This might or might not help re jigs

http://www.thewoodwhisperer.com/videos/ ... tool-setup

heimlaga · 9 Mar 2013

Thanks. Apparently the magnetic jigs aren't as good as I hoped. Those dial calipers do nothing that my wooden straightedge doesn't. I was hoping for a jig that would keep the knife in place while I tighten the screws as I must turn the cutterhead 180 degrees to reach those screws that adjust the height of the knife.
When my machine was new and dust collection was an almost unknown novelty those screws could be reached with a screwdriver from below but later on it was retrofitted with dust hoods for a later model so I must turn the cutterhead around to reach the adjustment screws. The modern fancy cutterhead on the video has adjustment screws that can be reached from above.

Steve Maskery · 10 Mar 2013

If you go the magnetic jig route, I think you will find they are much of a muchness. Yes they do work, but they are not as idiot-proof as we may be led to expect. I did a comparative test of Dakota and another, the name of which escapes me. They were slightly different but worked in much the same way. They both worked perfectly the first time I tried them, and I was impressed. But subsequently I had more fiddling to do and I don't know why. It was as if they were cantankerous.
One limiting factor was the amount of space available for for magnetic contact, although if you have a 100m cutter black, that really should not be a problem.
TBH I think the trad way has yet to be beaten for speed and ease, once you get the knack.
S

heimlaga · 12 Mar 2013

Thanks. This means that I will continue doing as I have done so far.

Geoff F · 5 Mar 2014

Thanks for posting the video carlb40, it told me virtually all I needed to know - and more - for fitting my new blades - my machine which I bought from a guy on this forum is a Scheppach 260 ci.

Random Orbital Bob · 5 Mar 2014

I bought that oneway dial tool and its absolutely brilliant. I can be 100% certain that not only are my knives protruding by the same height across the table but also by exactly how many thou. I use one of the magnetic jigs to "suck" the blade up but don't care about the setting because simultaneously I have the dial gauge resting on the knife edge with the dial gauge calibrated to the outfeed table height exactly. That way I use the mag jigs set screw to go either up or down but I'm reading the dial jig to tell me by exactly how much. The other methods lack of precision used to drive me nuts because they were all relative. This way I can literally see with my own eyes a scale that tells me by how much the blade is rising or falling with respect to the outfeed height.