Talk me down out of the trees....

Re: Oh Come on Bill....

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

"What I really need is a kick in the pants to get moving on the next piece of furniture."

I was inclined to say that but resisted.

Aligning knives is a pain if they are sent out for sharpening. I can understand anyone seeking a better solution. It could be a segmented head or a "Disposal Insert" which I have from a reliable source work well even for a commercial shop in an industrial machine that planes a lot. Personally, I don't experience problems planing that would justify a spiral head just for surface quality. But I don't plane much knoty or foreign lumber.

Used Delta and Powermatic 12-13" or even 18" planers are available and they are a last- a- life time machine of equal of better quality than the Griz' etc. I can understand upgrading to one of these used machines that would be about the same price as a new bench top.

Re: Couple Things....

Yonak

"Going wider for a planer only makes sense if you can joint the same first." -- David Yoho

The OP is going to be planing 1000bf of lumber. If it were me, I'd want the ability to send two boards through at a time. Plus, you can't discount the the great advantage of the weight and power of a stationary planer.

Bill, maybe for you . . .

Yonak

Bill, maybe planing 1000bf of oak lumber is a snap for you but for me, at my age, that chore would last a week and that lightweight lunchbox planer would end up chucked out my shop door into the creek.

Knives...

John in NM

Aligning knives used to be easy, but still took an hour or so. This was when everyone still had jack screws in the head and you used a dial indicator on a surface gauge to set each knife parallel to the bed and a consistent distance above. With practice you could get to within +/-0.0005", which is vastly better than any woodworker would need. Quick and dirty I used to aim for +/-0.003" and it would take an hour to do all three knives and was still vastly better than anyone would need.

Then those "planer pal" jigs came out and the job could be done to +/-0.010" or so (maybe a little better depending on how well the jig was initially set up) and everyone who had a jig tossed out the jack screws and replaced them with springs.

Then the preindexed knives in lunchbox planers came along (with Byrd style preindexed cutters for the pros) and those little jigs disappeared.

These days, good luck finding anyone who knows how to set a knife on an old machine

Re: Couple Things....

David Yoho

Barry said - I have about a 1000 bf or white oak and more walnut, cherry, and poplar that will eventually have to get planed. I occurred to me that if I run that pile of oak through that little planer it will be the end of the planer.

I took that to mean he had all that but didn't need to plane it all at once. The bigger heavier machines are nice for production work if you have the budget and space -- both of which Barry sounds short of. I know I've dressed at least that much through my 13" planer over time and it's still solid as the day I bought it.

I still stand by my point of jointer capacity versus planer capacity. How are you going to joint a flat face on a 12" wide board on a 6" jointer when prepping stock for a panel much wider. I'd guess most of us joint no wider than the capacity of our jointer, plane to thickness, and glue up.

Big jointers

John in NM

"I occasionally see a video where someone runs a huge board over a jointer that looks like and aircraft carrier and flattens it as if it were nothing and I drool...a little."

Good thing its only a little, because they require a lot of work to keep flat. You only want a jointer as big as ~2/3 your planing capacity - 8" for a 12" planer for example - the exception being one of the excellent combo machines available where parity doesn't cost you anything. If you have a lunchbox planer, you can easily pair it with an 8" jointer and learn how to flatten a 13" board on a small planer.

I learned most of what I know about machine setup fighting with an import wedge bed jointer vs an Oliver 166 at one shop I worked for. The wedge bed was vastly harder (for me) to get set up, but once there it tended to stay. The Oliver was technically easy, but required periodic tweaking to stay flat (it was heavily used however, that makes a difference vs a hobbyist using the same machine).

So don't drool over those heavy jointers, they are only worth the space if you have a huge planer and plane wide boards. They're a very cool thing to have if your shop is in a hangar and you can afford the cost, but most of us can't.

Re: Big jointers

Brian Holcombe

The heft of the machine begins to really count for something as they wide and long. When you see how much large Martin or Hofmann machines weight it becomes clear that to be exceptionally sturdy and remain flat they must also be quite heavy.

My combo machine is the heaviest of the group in 16” size at 1200lbs and it is half the weight of a 20” Martin which is 2500lbs and 3’ longer.

Re: Bill, maybe for you . . .

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

1000 bd ft is about 125 pieces of lumber, based on what we would receive in a typical pack of 12' oak or poplar. With a feed rate of 50'/ minute that is about 0.5 hours of work per pass for two people with a 12" planer, and half that for a larger machine, even less for higher feed rate skip planing on the first pass. We charged $300/1000bdft to plane S2S 15 years ago. Almost always my 100 pound wife was the person stacking on the other end of the machine, and still is.

I don't think that was it...

John in NM

An Oliver 166 is a big machine with plenty of mass. In that case I think the problem was how each bed adjusts on a 4-point inclined way and the backlash in the adjusting screws.

A large wedge style like a Northfield might not share that kind of problem - though given the size of the base vs the mass, I would bet that there would be more trouble with just gravity and the ways.

I would still say a stand alone 12" jointer is an un-necessary machine for anything under a 15" planer.

Setting knives

Barry Irby

Oddly, setting the knives on my Dewalt 733 is very simple. It only has two knives that I can sharpen myself and there are two little magnetic setting blocks. Remove the 8 screws and the old knife, stick the sharp one in and reinstall the eight screws. Couldn't be much easier. And yet I resist.

machine weight

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

I got to know an owner of a furniture parts factory, Virginia Woodworking. His creed was to judge machines by their weight. The heavier they were the better they were by his reckoning. He had a 48+" planer for planing lumber cores for 4 x 8 and 4 x 10 plywood.

Re: machine weight a little data for you

E Phillip Smith

I'm a old tool junkie. Enjoy collecting and working on vintage woodworking equipment as much as woodworking. During the 80's I purchased a new Powermatic 100 planer. At the time it was the most expensive machine in the shop. For a home machine it is very difficult to beat. Small foot print, heavy cast iron frame and table and well machined. That said a few years ago began looking for larger planer something in the 18" or larger range. Asian import was not on the list. During quest looked at all of the vintage machines, Powermatic, Newman, Oliver, Cresent, Whitney, etc. Finally found a Newman 600 24" finish planer locally at a fair price. it fits the curve below.

As part of the search of looking at essentially all of the vintage planers I collected data on all of them, weight, footprint, cutter head size etc. What became clear is that the designers put a premium on mass and cutter head diameter.

When you plot planer weight versus cutter head length you find that the planers weight is approximately cutter head length raised to the 2.55 power. ie cutter length^2.55. ie a Powermatic 100 would expect to weigh 400 to 500 lbs, Powermatic 18" will be in the 1300 lb range and a 24 in Newman will be north of 3000 lbs.

Re: Your 100 Pound wife.

Hank Knight

Bill, your 100 pound wife can outwork most 200 pound men I know.