Best small planer, or best forum to ask?

[gwilson]

Scruffy nailed it: Grind a back angle on the front of your knives. This makes them SCRAPE instead of cutting,which is exactly what the Byrd type heads do. Look at those carbide inserts: They scrape.They will plane curly maple without tear. It's amazing.

I know a guy whose partner used to do exactly that on a 20" disc sander,to their planer blades,and it worked perfectly.

 

[Tannewitz]

Richard,I have had my hands on most every American made planer at one time or another. I would opt for the 12 inch Boice Crane and a mechanism for variable speed feed and the cutter head/knife or insert combination of your choice.

They are vastly superior to anything that Delta ever made and are better than the 12 inch Powermatic in my opinion even though it would be a close second. One can be had by searching on owwm.com and perhaps placing a posting that you are looking for such a machine. You should be able to find one in the 250 to 500 dollar range. Makita and Hitachi both made excellent planers with polymer coated feed rolls that work well for similar applications.

~John

 

[richard newman]

Thanks for the recommendations and advice from everyone.

I am familiar with back bevels, use them on my hand planes for figured stock when necessary. I tried putting a back bevel on planer knives many years ago, worked with curly maple, but i didn't like the surface quality it left, scraping is a relatively harsh cut. It was much more difficult to hone the knives really sharp, that micro bevel is hard to ride on with a stone. And the knives got dull much faster. Granted this was long ago before I knew much, could no doubt get them sharper now.

I'm not ruling back bevels out, might as well try it if I get the planer running, but I am really impressed with the cut I get with shelix heads. They are not scraping, there is definitely positive rake. Hard to tell how much, I'll try to compare it to a straight knife head. But the carbide inserts are really sharp, stay that way for a LONG time, and it's easy to just replace or rotate one for a nick. But most of all the cut is clean and very smooth.

Tannewitz - thanks for the Boice Crane recommendation. Seems I've heard this before (from you?). I'm very open to alternatives, i will keep my eyes peeled for one. I bought the Delta because it showed up locally on Craigslist for peanuts, couldn't resist, but I could just repair the feed mechanism and sell it.

Right now the project is on a far back burner, no orders for rims at the moment, but lots of banjos to finish, wood and tools to sell. Maybe this winter.

 

[gwilson]

The Shelix inserts are cutting,but the extremely high cutting angle approaches scraping,and that is what does the trick. Even in the 18th. C.,they honed the front of their plane irons to steeper angles to use on figured grain. Many of the old planes in our museum collection have irons so treated. It did make the planes harder to push,but got better results. In ehe late 18th. C.,the chip breaker came along,but for many years how to properly use it was forgotten. The chip breaker needs to be set within 3 or 4 thou. of the cutting edge. It bends the chips back at a severe angle,and prevents tear out amazingly well if you set it up right. This was only recently rediscovered. Even old Stanley planes can do fantastic work if their chip breakers are properly adjusted. They must also be very carefully mated to the surface of the blades,to keep chips from shooting right up under them.

 

[stephen thomas]

I'm not going to admit ever doing it, or using, say a Belsaw, but in some planers, the knife can be moved to the back of the pocket and the gib forward, significantly decreasing the attack angle while maintaining the same sharpness angle on the knife.

The knife needs to be long enough (wide enough) that the gib does not have an inclination to cock in the pocket; and it won't work with gibs where the screws don't bear fully in the pocket. However, replacement gibs can be made to do the deed.

The gibs need to be clean and well set. The knife being set at a less positive attack angle by geometry has a larger radial component of force that tends to pull it.

smt

Edited: PS, I re-read this and "front/back" may be confusing depending on which direction you are looking at the cutter head from; but I think the concept is obvious.

 

[richard newman]

Varying the rake angle or pitch is definitely old technology. I seem to remember Holtzapffel mentioning it in his book, and it certainly shows up on old planes. The Egyptians probably did it.

There are a fair number of cutterheads floating around out there, having been replaced by the insert heads, wondering if I could just modify one to get a lower rake (higher cutting angle). Or maybe make a wedge to fit in the slot. Or a fixture to hold the blades for honing a back bevel. Tempting…

It's a trade off between the $$ for the Shelix and the time spent dicking around. Once the shelix is in there I doubt I'd ever have to swap out the inserts, given my advanced age.

 

[gwilson]

An excellent tip,Stephen. I am committed to The quick change German knife system,Dispoz-A-Blade,but I might investigate your tip when I have to change blades. But,I don't have a Belsaw.

 

[stoneaxe]

Ancient topic, but I will toss in what we have done for similar applications. We are running two old 13" Delta planers- one with a serrated infeed, byrd head , and rubber outfeed. This is for general purpose use. The other has rubber infeed and outfeed rolls, and back beveled HSS straight knives- the cutting (hook)angle is about 10 degrees.We use this for minute adjustments to thickness with no tearout, on maple, beech and cherry and sapele.

 

[rons]

I used one of those before. It screams when a dust collector vacuum is applied to the hood.

 

[M. Moore]

Richard,
One potential solution is to take out the cutterhead from the 13” Delta machine and machine it down to the right arbour size. Then just buy a 4,5 or 6” insert shaper head to fit on the shaft. You could probably just machine down one end, slip on the cutterhead and go to town. (obviously with a clamp nut)
Fairly low investment but gets you the machine you need as long as the delta has a smooth feed and zero snipe. I think a smaller machine is better with the smaller diameter head and the feed rolls closer together etc.
I have the 20” SCM planer as well and sometimes use it for thin stock. I have planed down to 2mm and it works but there is a pucker factor involved. If the grain catches or reverses sometimes the piece can explode. I use a one inch thick mdf insert so I can crank the table up for the thin stuff.
I have also sanded figured woods given the difficulty of planing and when going really thin, like 2mm, I usually need to glue one end to a piece of 1/2” mdf and then run them all through. My machine is not the best so maybe other machines perform better but thought I would mention it for the record. When feeding thin stuff that is fairly narrow there is a tendency for the feed to slip and that is a disaster when sanding.

 

[richard newman]

Michael, I've pretty much given up on this idea, too many projects, and not enuf time. I had considered using shaper heads, rejected it for two reasons - I think a solid head would be stiffer, and my experience with Byrd is that their journal heads are more precisely made than their shaper heads. My first shaper head had .005" TIR, had to rebore and sleeve it, which was challenging and time consuming. Second one was better, but still didn't give as flat a surface as the one in my little 6" jointer. This fact was confirmed in a conversation with Dave at Oella Saw & Tool, one of their dealers.

I guess I'm lucky with my widebelt - when I was making furniture I sanded my veneers to .035", like the old 1/28" standard. My machine is an old 37" Linden Sandingmaster economy model, just a contact roll and no platen, but it's always done a great job for me. I've gone as thin as .015" without a backer board. I always expect it to go up the dust chute, but it hardly ever does. You're right about slipping being a disaster, even worse is accidentally hitting the panic stop. When I decided to try to sand off veneer tape from sketch face panels I disconnected the feed motor from the machine controls and used an extension cord from another receptacle so it would keep feeding no matter what. I made sure I always had someone standing by to disconnect if I got sucked in.

For banjo rim laminations, the sanding goes really fast if I have someone on the outfeed end. I can resaw very accurately, so I hardly have to take off more than .005"/face.

 

[M. Moore]

Richard,
I was pretty sure you had thought it all through and it sounds like the sander is the way to go for now.
That is a pretty smooth re-saw result! I could never get mine to be less than 0.5mm on 8 to 10 inch wide stock and usually it was a bit more.

 

[richard newman]

Michael,
I built myself a little resaw power feeder to use for banjo rim laminations, which are only 3" wide. It really made a difference for me - quality of cut, speed, and minimum physical wear and tear. I sometimes need to saw 300 laminations, it goes really fast!

It has Weinig tires, pneumatic cylinder for pressure, dc gearmotor for adjustable speed with no loss of torque at low speeds, and lignum vitae guides. I use 1/2" x .025 4tpi hook blades, fully tensioned to 25 or 30 kpsi, bimetallic for exotics. I once tried squeezing a Lenox Diemaster .025 blade in my mill vise to reduce set, got a .037 kerf and a very smooth cut, but had to go VERY slow to avoid resonance. Worth it as I was saw Brazilian rosewood fingerboards and guitar sides. Gotta try this again with some lube, but my Micronizer is all gummed up, needs rebuilding. I'm also planning to modify the feeder it to handle 9" or wider boards, have lots of cool material to saw for guitar sets

Here is a video and some pix

 

[richard newman]

Just posted the video on youtube, my first post!

 

[jaguar36]

Could you post some pictures of what the wood looks like after being sawn? I've been trying to do some resawing and have been getting pretty terrible results so I think I need to build something similar.

 

[M. Moore]

I like that little feeder! I mainly re-saw 6- 10” wide so I would like to see your larger version. How do you control the feeder roll pressure? What is the large bar sticking towards the operator? Also the lower lignum guides look like they might be hard to adjust? Is there an easy way?

 

[richard newman]

Thanks Michael!

Feed roll pressure is controlled with the air regulator. The bar was to enable moving the feed roll out while under pressure. Turned out not to be needed, so eliminated. I try to imagine and provide for every feature I might need, easier than retrofitting after it's done and assembled.

The photo below shows how the lignum guides are adjusted in and out. Had plans for more involved adjusters, but never got around to it and don't miss it. That happens so often, I overthink/design something and then find out it just doesn't have to be so complicated.

Also, I found a better video of the feeder in use, changed the link in my post above

 

[richard newman]

Couldn't edit the link above, here's a better & longer video.

 

[M. Moore]

I see in the second vid the roller moves back a little as the board starts to feed. Air cylinders are not overly forgiving in that they tend to be a bit hard. Are you setting the air pressure low and increasing it until the board feeds without slipping? Is there any kind of spring in the roller or just air pressure?
I use lignum guides in my re-saw and they work very well. The important thing is to tension the blade and then adjust the guides snug without moving the blade.

 

[richard newman]

I don't see why an air cylinder would be different from a metal spring if the force they exert is the same. Actually, the air cylinder force would remain constant at any position, while the coil spring force should increase as it's compressed. But to be honest, I just put it together, set an arbitrary air pressure, and it worked fine so I left it there.

I was going to replace the lignum guides with carbide, bought some blanks to braze to steel, but I'm liking the lignum. Easy to replace, and no possibility of stripping teeth off a carbide blade.

So Michael, what is your setup for resawing?