Thread: Carbatec CTJ-350 Jointer Warning

Double grub screws are not unheard of, our jointer and bandsaws at work have them as well. AFAIK, they serve the same purpose as double nuts, the second one is there to apply pressure to the first one so that it can't slip - a potential issue with vibrations.

I'd suggest that it's actually GOOD a sign because it means that the manufacturer has gone to the extra length of putting a lock grub screw in.

Thanks for that comment. Somebody else made the same suggestion to me. I guess it would have been nice if the owner's manual covered table alignment and this may have then been included. Would have saved me a great deal of trouble.

I wouldn't be so unhappy with your choice of jointer second hand or otherwise. You should be so lucky that the Carbatec jointer has this parallelogram adjustment. Nearly every other jointer on the market relies on a sliding dovetail affair which means that there is no adjustment other than how it came out of the factory. Given years of use and general wear and tear this sliding dovetail system means that the infeed table will inevitably develop a dip and will no longer be coplanar with the outfeed table. Not the most ideal situation given a jointer's intended purpose. At least with the CTJ-350 as with most of the carbatec jointers any irregularities can be adjusted out (in both planes) regardless of whether or not they were made by either the manufacturer or the previous owner.

As well this parallelogram setup means that regardless of how little or how much you take off by adjusting the depth cut on the infeed table, the stock is always supported as best as it could possibly be as the end of the table follows the same arc as the cutter head. This is opposed to the sliding dovetail mechanism where the infeed table falls away from the cutter head leaving an ever increasing gap relative to the depth of cut. This in turn means your stock is nowhere near as well supported as it spans the gap between the end of the infeed table and the cutter head.

To the best of my knowledge the only other readily available make that has this same parallelogram feature is Powermatic and even then it is only found on their higher end models. All in all, despite the lack of instructions which I admit is frustrating I think you have made a good choice. Given the lack of instructions and how difficult and time absorbing it is to tune a jointer in this fashion, maybe there is an assumption on the manufacturer's part that the average end user/customer shouldn't or wouldn't bother with such a task and thus the rationale behind the factory pre-set with the double grub screws in place