POWERTEC 80000 Planer/Jointer Knife Setting Jig, Dia 3-Inch to 5-Inch

I am giving the item only two stars, not because of the quality of the jig, but because the item description was inaccurate. It was stated that this item works with any planer with a 3" cutter head, but that is not correct. I have a planer with a 3" cutter head, and this jig will not fit it because the chip breaker is in the way, and all four magnets will not make contact with the cutter head. Otherwise I would have liked it.If you have a grizzly 15 inch planer with a 3" cutter head, this item will likely not work because of the chip breaker. Although yes it will fit on a 3" cutter head, the chip breaker will not allow allow the jig to make contact with both magnetic legs. The only way this product could be used on my machine from the headstock access, would be to either tear down the machine and remove the chip breaker which would be silly, and a waste of time, or the other alternative would be to fit the jig upside down on the cutter head, between the planer bed and the cutter head, and use it upside down which would not be recommended because you can not see what you are doing and can not see the gib bolts and be inserting the blades from the underside of the headstock. Plus you could cut yourself on the knives if you can not see what you are doing. So unfortunately I am having to return the item.I think a smaller version of this jig would work, for some of the smaller cutter heads up to a 3" size. This jig starts at 3" and goes up from there and that is the problem.

These work great, but if you are not used to working with micrometers there is a little bit of a learning curve converting the marks to fractions of an inch. In my scenario I used my jigs to restore a Foley-Belsaw Planer/Molder. Because the previous owner did not have the blades or the machine set to factory specs, I needed to set the depth of the blades based on a measurement, not the current set up. It took watching some videos and working through some conversion tables to get it just right. All's well that ends well, but it may not be as straight forward as you'd like right out of the box. Once you have the correct setting, these things make it a dream to set all your blades quickly and perfectly.

Setting the knives on my Belsaw 910 is challenging because the gibs tend to lift the knives as they are tightened. I used a dial indicator to double-check the consistency between the knives and on my first attempt there was a difference of about 0.010". I saw a suggestion in a forum to polish and lubricate the gibs, and put pressure on the jigs as the gibs are raised. Doing that reduced my error to around 0.004". I'm not sure how much of that error was due to the gibs and how much was due to the jigs. The planer is probably working well enough now but I may try to improve that result in the future.

These guides worked well on my 25 inch. planer, the micrometer style settings enabled me to be precise when setting my blades. This was the first time I changed the blades on my planer and I had a lot of worry that I would run into trouble, but with this gauges the job went easier then I thought it'd be.

It's not plain to see if these work for everyone but for me they were a no go.My 15" jet planer is not comparable with these.

Without the recommendation of this alignment tool I could not of set my planer blades this easily, this tool worked perfectly and made the setting of my planer blades a very easy chore

I didn't find these that much better than other methods. For the money I thought it would have saved me a lot of time...

Works wonderfully...just gotta know how to use them. They are not necessarily graded identical but it doesnt matter. Reguster your cylinder on both ends and write down the reading. Then insert the blade and register the reading, do the delta of both readings and make sure the other side has the same delta. Your vlade will ve straight...repeat with remaining blades.