I'm clearly doing something wrong

Barry I have a lot of the same problems your having. The way I understand it while face or edge jointing you need to press more on the rear part of the board then when it gets about half way across the cutter head press more on the front of the board and very little if any on the rear. I do this but still have problems. One thing that would help us both is to get helical cutter heads for our jointer and thickness planer. The problem is cost ( they ain't cheap ). I have heard that the best things in life are free but that doesn't apply to wood working.

PS- This is the reason I buy straight run lumber that is 13/16" thick. I was trying to edge joint a piece of hard maple yesterday that was 20" long. It had a slight bow on the edge with the two ends being high. I could never get it dead flat so I took it to the table saw and ripped the other side turned it around and ripped the bow out and then squared up both ends. There is some really good wood workers here so maybe they will help us out.

David, i checked the tables by raising the infeed table to the height of the outfeed and used a couple of my longest straightedges to make sure they were flat from end to end and from front to back. The knife blade just barely touched the straightedge. Then, I took my Wixly angle gage, set it on the outfeed table and zeroed it. I moved it along the entire length of both infeed and outfeed tables and it remained at zero. Then, I lowered the infeed table about 1/2", which is more than I've ever lowered it, and the angle gage remained at zero which showed that moving the infeed table didn't cant it in any direction. Again, if there's more that I can do please let me know.

From what i've read, i might be putting too much pressure on the outfeed too early and letting up on the infeed too early. Tomorrow, if it's not too hot in the garage, I'm in Florida now, I'll experiment with some scrap lumber. I really can't afford to keep wasting hardwood.

And, Don, if I had the money to put helical heads on my jointer and planner, I'd use it to air condition my garage.

Few tips from finewoodworking for fixing a taper.

"First, try transferring pressure to the outfeed side of the workpiece as soon as possible. Keeping pressure on the infeed side will cause tapering.

If that doesn’t work, check that your outfeed table is set slightly below the highest point of the knives’ arc. Align the cutterhead so that one blade is at its high point and lay a straightedge across the knife and table. There should be a gap no greater than the thickness of a sheet of photocopier paper between the straightedge and outfeed table just after the cutterhead.

If aligning the outfeed table doesn’t get rid of the taper, check that the infeed and outfeed tables are coplanar. Raise the infeed table to full height, move the cutterhead so that no knife is above the tabletop, and lay a 4-ft. straightedge along the infeed and outfeed tables. If the tables aren’t in the same plane, you’ll have to shim the ways to fix the problem."

The second tip fixed my General jointer with blades.

Barry,
Forgive me for asking this, but I don't understand from your photo what the problem is, I am not saying of course that you don't have one, it's just that I don't do well understanding pictures as well as most people do. Can explain it to me.

I do use my jointer and thickness planer with almost every piece of wood that I use in a project. I have never had the a problem with my 6" Grizzly jointer after getting it adusted so that I get no snipe. Getting the outfeed table adjusted so that I got no snipe took some putzzing with, but now I just run material over the jointer paying little attention to how I do it other than keeping the material hard down as it passes over the cutters and it does a perfect job every time. I do take several shallow cuts until the material is cleaned up and then to to the thickness planer and again take very shallow cuts with it also. The jointer does have helical cutting heads and tht might be why I have had such good luck with it.

I of course don't know what to tell you, but I maight have an idea if you can find time to give me a "verbal description of what is going on. I am sure that I am wrong about this or somebody would have mentioned it by now, but it looks like some sort of a snipe issue, but of course that can't be it. It is does however just about have to be omething in your set up. What planer do you have by the way?

Changing subjects now, I do recognize that many wood workers find no need for a jointer, and others, lsuch as myself do like them. I just understand how material can be milled without one so that it is square and all sides are parallel with each other, but that's probable due to my lack of experience and/or knowledge about such things so just cut me some slack on that point if you don't agree with me. I seem to do a lot of things that a lot of folks don't agree with.

I am looking forward to Barry getting his problem solved and know what he did to get the planer working to his satisfaction. I know that he is a perfectionist and very knowledgable about woodworking. I also hope that he can get settled into his new home and have more time to work in his new shop.

Jerry

Quick update. I pulled a muscle in my back putting some shelving in a new closet so I haven't been in the shop in a few days. This morning I decided to check the jointer setup once again. It turned out right but I had a "Duh!" moment that, somewhat embarrassing, I want to share. I knew the infeed and outfeed tables were coplanar. I checked it multiple times with every straightedge that I have in the shop. The last thing was the blade height. I had eyeballed it by laying a an engineers square on the outfeed table and turning the blades. They just touched it but that was eyeball. Then I began to wonder if there was some way I could use my Digiline gage to check it. I bought it for my table saw and that's all l used it for. I looked at the directions that came with it and it was all about table saws. As I turned the box around, there was a picture of how to set it up to check jointer blades. After my headache passed from slapping my forehead with the palm of my hand I decided to try it. Although the tip of the gage is round, a flat one would work better, I was able to check each knife at both ends and in the center. They were all within .002 so I figure that's close enough. Hopefully, in the next day or two my back will permit me to cut up some lumber and run it through the jointer taking note of how i'm putting pressure on the piece as it moves across the cutter head.

I guess my take away from this is to "think outside the box" since that's where the picture was