手押しカンナ盤 Jointers

[Chris Hall]

A 300mm jointer by Aichi Electric Industries (愛知電機):

[Chris Hall]

A 400mm jointer with cross-cored tables and fence, by Matsuoka:

[Chris Hall]

This old girl, 300mm wide, is by Shōda (庄田) - note the skewed cutterhead:

[RLSIII]

revisiting a very old thread with a first post. what capable looking beasts. you pointed out the the skewed cutter head I have not seen such an option on machines in the US. i have barely been able to find used machinery for sale with a capacity beyond 8" let alone one with such an intriguing design. I'd like to know how it compares to a square cutter of the same capacity, or dare I say a helical cutter in finish quality. though ive no base of experience with wide jointers I have to imagine most machines of industrial nature would produce adequate results once setup. whats the availability of machinery of this variety? I have to imagine the shipping is a painful percentage of the purchase price.

[Chris Hall]

The US market, Rob, is an odd one for jointers it seems to me. There is a large population of hobbiest woodworkers and most product sales are geared towards them. There is also a culture of 'cheap' here which tends to reduce the likelihood of smaller high quality machines making much of a dent in the market. The typical hobby woodworker has a garage or a basement at his/her disposal and hence doesn't have the room, or the electrical supply, for the bigger industrial machines. So, when you go a-shoppin' for jointers, most of what you find will be 6" machines, with the odd 8" "long bed" machine. Occasionally you will come across a 10" Japanese jointer, and 12" Inca jointers, which have quite short tables. Then there are the Euro combination machines, which often have a 12" jointer, sometimes a 16". These jointers are on the shorter side, and the fence is attached at one end of the infeed table (typically), making the fence inherently flexy.

The industrial market for the old school machines has pretty much collapsed. There is only one domestic manufacturer (Northfield) and very few factories would likely invest in a jointer when cutting solid wood is becoming rather less common. If most of what you do is sheet good manufacture (cheap furniture, kitchen cabinets, etc) then the kind of machine you would want to drop the dough on will be a CNC, large panel saw, edge bander, wide-belt sander, optimizing saw, etc.

You can find older domestically produced machines. For some reason the most common size is 16". Other sizes, up to even 30" exist, but are fairly uncommonly found. No problem to find pre-WW I machines in the US, with square cutter heads etc. A lot of these machine will need rebuilding, tables re-decked, cutter head upgrades, etc.

As for Japanese machines, the common jointer width there is 250mm-350mm. I've rarely seen machines wider than 400mm for some reason. They're well made heavy lumps of cast iron.

If buying a single machine, you can anticipate that the cost of shipping and crating will be about the same as the cost of the machine. Only when ordering half a dozen machines, say, filling a container with your stuff, could you expect to realize much a of discount. And in this day and age, unlike past years, each machine must be individually crated and documented - you can't just fill a container with random stuff, packing in as much as you can.

[Brian]

There is also a very strange idea that they are unnecessary. That does not mean that people find them to be made redundant because they prefer to joint by hand, instead they simply feed through the planer in hopes that the lumber will magically be made flat and true rather than thinner and still warped.

[Chris Hall]

There is also a very strange idea that they are unnecessary. That does not mean that people find them to be made redundant because they prefer to joint by hand, instead they simply feed through the planer in hopes that the lumber will magically be made flat and true rather than thinner and still warped.

Yes, indeed. That is a fairly widespread idea, and completely erroneous.

The first place I worked at after returning from Japan was Daizen Log Tech on Vancouver Island. I always remember one of the other workers there insisting that a jointer was not needed because you could "rip stuff straight on the tablesaw"

[RLSIII]

I can think of no power tool more important to producing quality work. the idea of a 30" jointer is hard to fathom, it clearly would want to kill you. I would love to see one in operation. realistically a quality 16" is all I just justify for my modest plans hopefully I can make it happen this year. just a little pre shopping if you will.
here in pa there is a surprising amount of Industrial wares stashed in "Amish" workshops and Pennsylvania barns. I put a roof on a barn house last year and the homeowners had rented their 100x50 timber barn to the neighboring Amish who had a plethora of vintage delights including an aged but mechanically flawless Martin sliding tablesaw. I was so captivated I must of lost an embarrassing amout of time on that job checking it out. hopefully something reputable pops up at the right time.

[Chris Hall]

Timing + cash on hand = happiness?

[Chris Hall]

Here's a few more Japanese jointers to look at:

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Wish I had a larger pic - one of the longest infeed tables I have ever seen.

Taiyo is a common brand:

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Kikukawa:

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Looks like it needs some attention to the electrics.

Kuwahara makes some very solid looking machines:

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A sleek design which is a bit reminiscent of sliding table saws with the rotary adjustment wheels for the infeed and outfeed tables.

Shimohira:

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Fence attached to the infeed table.