Jointer Fence Warped and Twisted

[mike4244]

When face planning do you get acceptable results? If so the fence is good enough and leave well enough alone.
I would not spend a lot of money to have the fence re-ground. May even warp again after machining.
Lapping is possible but very time consuming. Scraping is an excellent way but only for very experienced machinist.
As a last resort I would epoxy hardwood to the face, install on a carrier board in a straight plane by shimming.Then run thru a planer. I believe this would work.
mike

[Rick F]

I agree with mike, stick a straight face over the warped cast.. call it a day.

[packerguy®]

Swung by a machine shop this morning and got a ballpark estimate from the owner/machinist after describing the job to him, of $150 - $250.

That was the go away price. (unless he makes $700/hr)

How bad is it warped and twisted? Is this obvious to the naked eye, or a .005 thing?

[RonB1957]

That was the go away price. (unless he makes $700/hr)

How bad is it warped and twisted? Is this obvious to the naked eye, or a .005 thing?

A) It sounds like you need to shop around a bit.
B) I had a 6" delta some years back with the same problem. Something about not letting the cast iron cure long enough before milling it. Cost me about $50.00 to have it re ground, but after that it stayed dead flat. I bought my DJ20 as a refurbished unit. No problems except for a finicky switch.

[Tapper]

Update: 

First, thanks to all of you that offered your opinions and suggestions. At least a couple suggested attaching an auxiliary wooden/formica face to the existing fence, which I was seriously considering. For those that asked, the "bump" in the middle of the fence amounted to approximately a 1/8" runout end-to-end. This did not cause problems with either face or edge jointing necessarily but was annoying. The twist however was problematical, especially when edge jointing. It became difficult to get a square edge and showed up when placed against my tablesaw fence to rip the other edge. The twist was approximately 1/16" to 3/32" from one end to the other (fence is 35" long and 5" high).

I bought this jointer from a local home supply store (think Home Depot lite) that is a ShopFox dealer. Today I called and talked to the manager of their tool dept. He was extremely helpful after I explained the situation and said he would check to see if they could order the part and would call me back. He later called back and said that he would be able to order the fence (I had confirmed earlier that the retail price was $108) and had negotiated a discounted shipping cost that would bring the total cost of the new fence to $111 delivered. I pulled the trigger.

He also told me that if the new fence was discovered to be out of spec when it arrived, they would replace it with another one at no charge. New fence should arrive in 8-10 days. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Thanks again for your comments and suggestions!

Doug

[packerguy®]

Cool. Sounds like a win.

[MichaelS]

Sounds good Doug. I had a similar situation when I bought my PM60 years ago with twist. IIRC, I paid about $60 and had it reground by a local machine shop in a couple hours time (a chunk was spent jigging it up, the grinding didn't take long at all.)

Came back beautiful and looking new (on the face at least.)

The new unit should be good to go, but if you aren't satisfied, I wouldn't count the machine option out either.

Best,
Michael

[jgourlay]

Maybe add a wood face to it, flatten it, then a plastic laminate smooth face for less friction?

What makes this so completely and mind blowingly brilliant is that you can use a piece of stable materials (MDF, good ply) thick enough to counter sink in hardwear.  THEN you can use the jointer itself to assure that wood fence is flat.  That's awesome Doug!

Will do to my Griz jointer immediately!