Thread: Making long edges straight

The blades need only be a bee’s winky proud of the outfeed table. Other checks you can make is to check and see if the infeed tale is coplaner with the outfeed table. I would raise your outfeed table a smidge and see how it goes.

How deep is the concavity? If you’re talking only a millimetre or less over the whole six foot length that’s not really an issue, and can assist in the glue up as the board ends won’t need to be clamped. More than a mil is too much though.

i have a 6” long bed jointer and only really use it to rough out the edge; I always finish off by hand with a jointer plane.

I've got the 8" helical long bed from Carbatec as well. Mine is adjusted so that the cutting edge of the blades at their topmost arc are in line with the outfeed table. If I set a straightedge on the outfeed and turn the cutterhead, you can feel the cutters just making contact with the straightedge but no appreciable lifting of the straightedge, certainly not 3mm. The infeed and outfeed tables also needed adjustment to make them coplanar (when the infeed is fully raised) but the parallelogram adjustment system makes this job really easy.

In my personal experience the carbatec jointer came poorly adjusted from factory but as Alka said, it's easy to adjust. Having a slight (very slight) concave joint isn't a bag thing as a sprung joint is typically acceptable. The opposite is not ideal, though.

The following has some good info re. the jointer. It is possible as stated in the article that this could be partially a technique problem. Jointer Problems, Causes & Fixes - NewWoodworker.com LLC

Hi

Your problem actually is quite common and does baffle many people, but is very simple to rectify. As long as your planer is set up correctly and what I mean by that is, that both beds are parallel to each other regardless of the in feed table height and the out feed table is set to the knives (very important), do the following-

Pass the timber over the planer, in the middle of the bow (that of course is assuming there is one) place the timber over the top of the knives with pressure on the out feed side and pass it over again, then turn it around it repeat. If this does not fix the 'bow' there problem is with your set up and that another issue.

Good Luck

This is a video for setting up a Grizzly 8" helical jointer but as you'll see, it is exactly the same as the Carba Tec model, down to how it's packaged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK2nCH9u5wc

Watch that Grizzly youtube video if you follow it at every point your planer should be perfect. I just finished doing this to my Jointer it took me about 2 or more hours to get it perfect but having said that the squareness of my boards is 100% spot on.

Good Luck!