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Is / was there any Euro or American machine similar to this Japanese jointer edger?

Spud

Diamond
Joined
Jan 12, 2006
Location
Brookfield, Wisconsin
This is a Taiyo (Japanese) jointer edger, with powerfeed.



Was or is there any European or American machine that did the same thing? Does the Wadkin Par 4 do the same thing? I am unsurel on the Par 4 because the outfeed table is tiny compared to the above Taiyo


Wadkin Par 4, four sided planer thicknesser
Wadkin PAR Mk II Four Sided Planer

https://www.wadkin.com/archive pdfs/Wadkin PAR 4-Side Planer.pdf


par-4.jpg
 
Looks like a nice machine. I think that type of machine had a high enough price point that bypassing it and making the leap to a 4 or 5 head molder was a better idea. Having had and run a Weinig molder in my shop I know there is a huge difference in the output VS the machine shown. Setup was super easy and after running molding I alway put straight knife heads back. It was simple and easy enough to run a few S4S pieces at a time.
 
Looks like a nice machine. I think that type of machine had a high enough price point that bypassing it and making the leap to a 4 or 5 head molder was a better idea. Having had and run a Weinig molder in my shop I know there is a huge difference in the output VS the machine shown. Setup was super easy and after running molding I alway put straight knife heads back. It was simple and easy enough to run a few S4S pieces at a time.


I am unsure on what a moulder does. I had always thought a moulder didn't make boards flat and square, that it didn't work like a jointer and planer?
 
There were a number of US manufacturers before the 50's (probably before WW2) that made feeders for normally hand fed jointers.
I have a Bilstrom on a 16" F & E.

smt_Dumoreportamill5.jpg


Several manufactures made dedicated powerfed jointers. Oliver & Newman among others eventually added top heads to make them 2 sided.

Here is an older single side Oliver i used to own. I've set them up, but never ran this one in my own shop.

smt_oliverfacer.jpg

Feed is from left to right, as the machine sits. The short outfeed table would have been part of a production set up, fed onto a conveyor or table to feed directly into a free standing sindle side planer.

The type jointer you posted with a side head has come up as a FS reference a few years ago, either here or on OWWM. Someone asked me about it privately. AFAIK, there were never any with jointing side heads built as a standard machine in the US. As Scruffy notes, modern moulders can do that faster with better control. Probably a 4 sided planer or matcher could be contrived to do the side straightening function. AFA moulders, mostly 5 head machines with a long (jointerlike) infeed table & first head being bottom head flattening. Older 4 sided machines tend to produce better work with some pre-flattening done first.

Power fed "jointer type" machines are not nearly as good as manual methods to actually fully flatten & straighten lumber. For one thing, solid lumber moves every time a "significant" cut is taken off any side. A person used to flattening & straightening lumber learns to read it, and accommodate the process toward the particular goal of the end product. E.g., "perfect" for things like door parts, with parts that can't make it rejected rather than averaged vs "averaged" to go into things like mouldings on a shaper or perhaps 4 sided machine.

IME well set up power fed jointers do quite well removing cup and twist with adequate depth pass.
Not so much long bows. Not terrible on short pieces, & pretty well on glued up solid wood panels/planks if they are relatively short.
For the small shop, they also are not as good for getting the best yield out of every individual board = best flatness @ optimal thickness with best defecting. Partly because to use one both efficiently (throughput) and effectively (best flatness attainable per input thickness vs target thickness) It is most effective to take the full depth cut the material can yield, in one pass. Multiple small passes tend to be self defeating because the feeder presses the material based on the top (rough) side & can push out bows, or tilt the material (to follow a long twist) on difficult pieces, absent operator input to counteract.

If you make a high volume of commodity product from average and lower cost/grade material, they do reduce need for skilled labor & no doubt "safer" in OSHA's eyes.
 
There were a number of US manufacturers before the 50's (probably before WW2) that made feeders for normally hand fed jointers.
I have a Bilstrom on a 16" F & E.

smt_Dumoreportamill5.jpg


Several manufactures made dedicated powerfed jointers. Oliver & Newman among others eventually added top heads to make them 2 sided.

Here is an older single side Oliver i used to own. I've set them up, but never ran this one in my own shop.

smt_oliverfacer.jpg

Feed is from left to right, as the machine sits. The short outfeed table would have been part of a production set up, fed onto a conveyor or table to feed directly into a free standing sindle side planer.

The type jointer you posted with a side head has come up as a FS reference a few years ago, either here or on OWWM. Someone asked me about it privately. AFAIK, there were never any with jointing side heads built as a standard machine in the US. As Scruffy notes, modern moulders can do that faster with better control. Probably a 4 sided planer or matcher could be contrived to do the side straightening function. AFA moulders, mostly 5 head machines with a long (jointerlike) infeed table & first head being bottom head flattening. Older 4 sided machines tend to produce better work with some pre-flattening done first.

Power fed "jointer type" machines are not nearly as good as manual methods to actually fully flatten & straighten lumber. For one thing, solid lumber moves every time a "significant" cut is taken off any side. A person used to flattening & straightening lumber learns to read it, and accommodate the process toward the particular goal of the end product. E.g., "perfect" for things like door parts, with parts that can't make it rejected rather than averaged vs "averaged" to go into things like mouldings on a shaper or perhaps 4 sided machine.

IME well set up power fed jointers do quite well removing cup and twist with adequate depth pass.
Not so much long bows. Not terrible on short pieces, & pretty well on glued up solid wood panels/planks if they are relatively short.
For the small shop, they also are not as good for getting the best yield out of every individual board = best flatness @ optimal thickness with best defecting. Partly because to use one both efficiently (throughput) and effectively (best flatness attainable per input thickness vs target thickness) It is most effective to take the full depth cut the material can yield, in one pass. Multiple small passes tend to be self defeating because the feeder presses the material based on the top (rough) side & can push out bows, or tilt the material (to follow a long twist) on difficult pieces, absent operator input to counteract.

If you make a high volume of commodity product from average and lower cost/grade material, they do reduce need for skilled labor & no doubt "safer" in OSHA's eyes.


I am having a deja-vu moment here because I think I talked about this years ago. I was under the impression a moulder can't straighten a twisted , bowed and cupped board.



These Taiwense made double sided planer seem to be popular. I believe they are intended to remove twist, bow and cup to flatten a board.
Cantek 24” Heavy Duty Cardan Shaft Drive Double Sided Planer , Model G — WSI Machinery
 
I am having a deja-vu moment here because I think I talked about this years ago. I was under the impression a moulder can't straighten a twisted , bowed and cupped board.

Generally speaking you are correct.
However, there are (relatively) modern 5 head moulders with a long infeed set up like a jointer, and the first head is a bottom head, instead of the tradition top head. They are designed to flatten but you are still at the limitations of any powerfed jointer mentioned in the rest of my post. For making mouldings and for generic squares(rectangles) they do a pretty good job.

Also, stock fed into a moulder probably came off a straightline rip-saw. So the edge is within a tolerable range of straight to start. Depending how the moulder is set up & fed, it can get better or merely stay about the same.

The old machines i mentioned and owned are designed/will flatten twist, cup and short bows effectively. They do not do well with long bows and i really doubt the ability of a power fed jointer to deal as well with long bows as a skilled, practiced person can on a hand jointer.

I too, thought you asked that in the past.

At this point if you don't believe or understand why my experience and observations are as stated, then you should take some 12' or 16' boards to one of the machinery shows and have them run the worst ones that you would practically expect to use and see what happens.

Twist removal is limited by the amount of thickness you can lose from the board; that is true for any method.
Hoever, if you don't take enough of a cut, or the board does not have enough thickness, the machine will feed it flat until the surface runs out, then begin pressing it over and start cutting again. Yielding sort of a 2-flat faceted surface with the flats at angles to each other. If you don't know what you are running and the condition rears up in later steps of the fabrication process, it can create time consuming nuisances or compromise the work.

Same with a long bow, escept the flats will be segments of long bows. or it might just roll it though, flattening side to side but maintaining the long bow.

This can all be avoided at the bust up saws of course, dividing "difficult" boards into short parts before they are flattened, exactly as one would for a hand fed jointer. What i am trying to convey is that the process can work fine, but it is very different from hand work on a manual jointer. It is not the best way to optimize expensive material for technically demanding applications if the lumber is long.

A tiny example: If you are straightening say a 10' long board with an S bow in it, knocking off the humps on each face will cause it to relax and flatten. Then you work the faces differentially until one is flat &/or you have used up most of the thickness tolerance. It will probably come out of the planer on targer, and still fairly straight/flat.

If you take all the material off one side, with the S bow having one hump up and one down, very little relaxation will occur at the concave down section, but the convex (down) section will relax a lot. so after that face is flat, running it in the planer will knock off the hump on the opposite side of the convex down section, and it will relax going concave up. The stick will resume its S curve in the opposite direction when it comes out of the planer, though it will be more a straight end, merging into a hooked end (in the flat plane).

This is why i will never order S2S lumber in packs. Too much of it will not be flat enough for long work, and there is no remaining thickness to make it so. If the use is primarily short parts, and the lumber is busted up into short blanks before flattening by someone who understands working between or among defects, power fed jointers/facers can work beautifully. (Short to me is under 4') Or, possibly, much work or process does not require lumber as flat as i prefer to start. :)

smt
 
Thanks Stephen, that's a lot of info there.


So a moulder's infeed table can be set slightly lower than the outfeed table and there is a cutterhead seperating the two tables? Such that it works like a jointer? And one can spec out an edger cutterhead to square the sides ?

But a moulder still can not work wide pieces of wood like a large jointer or flatten boards with a large degree of twist, cup and bow ? It's ability to flaten and straighten is very limited compared to a jointer or double sided planer ?
 








 
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