Setting Knives on CTJ381.

**spokeshave** · 3rd February 2013, 03:10 PM

Hi every one,

So i lashed out over the New Year and purchased a Carbatec CTJ-381 thicknesser.

Went through all the pre-flight checks before breaking it in, then came time to set the height of the cutter knives.

Went about this as per the manual and found it a huge cause of frustration. After i loosened off the gib bolts, i set the knife height using the height gauge and the jack screws. But every time i tightened the gib bolts i found the knife had crept up and was now sitting too high. After trying numerous different approaches the result was always the same. The height would be perfect, only to be upset when the gib bolts were nipped up. They were set incorrectly out of the box too.

Do any other CTJ-381 owners out there have any tricks they use to ensure the knife heights stay put?

My last thicknesser used springs instead of jack bolts and i found this was a much easier set up. The larger CTJ-508 uses springs, could this be a possible retro-fit to the CTJ-381? The Grizzly manual has a drawing of the cutterhead and it shows pockets where springs may fit, but i didn't completely remove my knives so dont know if my machine has said pockets.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steven.

**pjt** · 3rd February 2013, 09:02 PM

It can be a pain, my process,.....I nip the gib bolts up enough so the blades are held firm but still loose enough to allow movement via the adjusting screws, then carefully adjust until I feel the tops of notches (from the manufacturing process) in the guage, fully tighten holding bolts and recheck, was usually ok at that.

Pete

**lesmeyer** · 3rd February 2013, 11:12 PM

A few years back I purchased some springs from Carba-Tec for the CTJ351 8" jointer. You should be able to get some for the CTJ381. I have the CTJ381 and before I removed the first set of knives, I purchased a set of magnetic jigs. I set the jigs using a set of feeler gauges and locked them in place taking photos of the jig position. This has worked well for subsequent knife replacements. The jigs only have one purpose in life.

. That is me being ........

Regards
Les

**spokeshave** · 4th February 2013, 08:44 PM

Thanks guy's

Will give it another go on the week-end if I get a chance.

I think I'll try and remove the knives to see if i can get some springs in there.

Steven.

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