Installing My Cool SHelix Cutterhead

SHelix ("Slicing Helix") and Helix cutterheads are, in my opinion, a huge leap forward in cylindrical cutterhead design. Instead of a set of 3 or 4 long knives, the cutterhead has dozens of little square ones, arranged in helical rows. There are about 4-5 rows of them, with each row slightly shifted horizontally from the one before it so that they cover the gaps from the one before it.

The advantages of this design are primarily that nicking a cutter doesn't require replacing an entire set of knives. With a helix-style, you probably only damaged a single cutter, and only in a little more than half of the rows. What's more, you don't even need to replace the damaged cutters, because each one has 4 sharp edges. So, you just need to loosen the torx screw, turn the cutter 90 degrees, and re-tighten.

Another advantage is that you don't need to "set" these like you would with jointer knives (making sure that each knife is parallel to the tables). As you can see in the pictures, each cutter is beveled on its underside, so they look like little trapezoids when viewed from the side. The seats for the cutters have this same shape, so you just tighten the screw and they self-register and self-align.

When these first appeared a few years ago, I only saw them offered on high-end jointers like maybe Delta or Powermatic 8" jointers and higher. So, unless I was going to drop $1,500 on a new jointer, I wasn't going to be part of this revolution. But then, I came across an eBay auction where a company was selling replacement cutterheads for my 6" Delta 37-196. I tried to come up with some reasons to not go after this, but none of them were compelling, because I had been lusting after one of these cutterheads for so long. So, I bid on it and got it for a shade over $240.

What follows is an accounting of what I received and how I installed it.

I think I won the bidding on a Saturday, and they shipped it out that Monday and I received it Friday, so I got it a lot sooner than I expected. As you can see in the first picture, they sent me the cutterhead (pre-fitted with new bearings! YEAY!) along with a torx driver and 5 spare cutters. Notice the padded envelope that the driver and cutters came in (you can click on any image for a larger version)... how it's got a bunch of little slices in it. That's from the cutterhead rolling against it during shipping. These things are SHARP!

Here, we have my stock Delta 37-196....

Removing two allen bolts removes the fence...

Next, I removed the guard, and backed both tables out as far as they'd go... praying to god that it'd be enough and that I wouldn't have to remove the tables.

The cutterhead's bearings sit inside of some pillow-blocks, which are held in their seats by some threaded rods with nuts on the underside of the jointer's main body. So, you remove the nuts. The red residue is from the red packing tape that I had put around the body to improve dust collection (giving the air no place to rush in except around the cutterhead).

To get to the other nut, I had to remove the mount for the fence. At this point, I also removed the drive belt. You can see how far I was able to back out the tables to make room for extacting the cutterhead.

One of the pillow-blocks was a little sticky, so I had to rap it a few times with a hammer and it came loose. Then, I was able to just get the cutterhead out.

I was able to use a puller to get the pillow-blocks off.

At this point, it's time to start putting the new one in... so this is the time when you get some thick leather gloves. Using a rubber mallet, I tapped the blocks onto the new cutterhead. I used a deep socket to tap down the one over the driveshaft. Also, notice the compressed air for getting all debris off of the block seats.

We were able to just squeeze the new cutterhead in between the tables. Whew!

Another glamour shot of the glorious beast....

With the cutterhead in place, the gloves can come off, and we can put the nuts back on the screws to secure the pillow-blocks.

Putting the pully back on the way it originally was.....

Then, I noticed that this would cause the belt to be askew, so I decided to take it off and turn it around...

Okay... this time will be right....

As long as I was doing an upgrade, I decided to replace the belt with some of that newfangled powertwist segmented belt stuff that I bought from Rockler a couple of years ago (and never got around to putting in the tablesaw. Here I am, adjusting the motor to get a good tension on the belt.

At this point, I adjusted the tables and ran some pieces through it (very scary without the guard!) to see how it would perform. It all looked pretty square. So, it was time to put the fence mount and fence back on.

One last longing look at the beast before I put the guard back on so that passersby will never suspect the supreme badness that lurks within.