I bought one of these knife setting jigs because setting knives correctly on the jointer takes me about an hour each time and this time I thought I'd try something new. I guess the jig functions like they describe, it's just a couple of magnets with some flat steel bars. Here's the problem, to set knives you find Top Dead Center of the cutter head and usually make a mark on the fence. This is done with a trusty staight edge and combination square. Then you position your new knife in the cutter head and at this point I would use a straight edge to get one end of the knife roughly even with the outfeed table. Gently tighten one side of the knife and do the same with the opposite side. Now, with a dial gauge I would go back and fine tune the height of each blade making each ~.001 above the outfeed table. It took some time to get it right but the dial gauge doesn't lie.
The problem with the jig is that I have to do all of these steps even using the jig. The only thing it helped with was roughing in the knives. When you tighten down the set screws knives tend to move a bit and this is still true when using the jig. Plus I always like to double check the knife height with the dial gauge to set each a bit high. You can buy yourself a dial indicator for less than $40 Grizzly G9849 Magnetic Base/Dial Indicator Combo - President's Special and get your jointer set just how you want it. Plus a dial indicator is useful aligning other shop tools. Woodstock W1211 4-Inch to 6-Inch Standard Jointer Pal
Another reviewer said this was really needed, thus I got it. I wasted my money. I much prefer the adjustment tool that wcame with the planer as opposed to this. First, you have to attempt to find top dead center and mark it on the fence, then scribe the fence(I really did not want to scratch my nice new planer....). Finding exact TDC on an arc is not easy. In any case, after fiddling with it and ten checking the results with my gauge, it came out pretty sorry.
I then reverted and used the gauge that came with the jointer and was able to adjust them all quickly and easily and they came out flat and the same. Thus, it now draws dust in the drawer... Anyone want to buy mine? - Jointers - Planer Accessories - Jointer - Planer'
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