Converted thickness planer

[David King]

As always it depends on the figure and the runout and how sharp the blades are. I'm very partial to spiral, segmented cutterheads but they are larger in diameter and the rollers need to be further apart as a result. One trick I've resorted to on the sander is running the thin stock through on a vacuum plate. That worked really well.

[Tom Sommerville]

Hi Clay,

I have a "Rigid" brand planer from Big Orange and taken wood down to around 5/32 with a 3/4" backing plate.
But I did have a blow-out when I tried it with padauk, serious enough to make me abandon the effort.
It seems the cutter adjustment wasn't as accurate as claimed.

Grooved blades might minimize such occurrences (though the grooves would need to be closer than initially described,) along with the vacuum hold-down and stacked shims beneath the plate for depth of cut adjustment.

Final thought--maybe-- it occurs to me that increasing the bevel angle to introduce more scraping action in the cut.

These are just thoughts. Fire away.

[Clay Schaeffer]

Hi Tom,
Generally I take light cuts on woods with difficult grain, and if I see a problem I use a sander instead. I am not familiar with the Ridgid planer, but the DeWalt blades are set by the user to whatever accuracy he is able to achieve.


"Grooved blades might minimize such occurrences (though the grooves would need to be closer than initially described,) along with the vacuum hold-down and stacked shims beneath the plate for depth of cut adjustment."

Interesting idea - I guess it might work like a toothing blade on a hand plane. One thing I've noticed with nicked planer blades is that the nicks seem to get bigger the more you use them. Small nicks like a toothing iron has may not do this.
I would hesitate on making the blades have more of a scraping action. Router bits (non spiral) have more of a scraping action than shaper cutters, and my experience is that shaper cutters usually have less tearout.

There are limitations with most tools. The small planers I think have the advantage over larger machines when it comes to planing things thin. The final finish and how well they plane difficult woods I think depends on the sharpness of the blades and how well they are set up. Some woods with squirrelly grain may require a thickness sander to get good results. Converting a planer to a thickness sander is an interesting idea, and I will be curious to see how it works out.

[Art Davila]

So far, so good, I guess. But I'd be mighty worried about the tough tape/sugar cubes coming loose. Would it be possible to adapt the original blade clamping scheme to lock in the paper?

Also, can you tell if hammering in the sugar cubes distorted or damaged the knifehead?

I can't remember what kind of motor is on those portable planers. Could a HF Router speed controller be used to slow it down? Could a variac be used to slow the motor down? (Are variacs still around?)

https://www.google.com/search?q=variac+ ... 2&ie=UTF-8

It seems they are still available

[Art Davila]

Also I remember a guy on youtube, who made a sled to hold small pieces and push them thru the machine.
Also he said he used sacrificial runners on the back and front to reduce incident of snipe.
I have never done it be cause I don't own a thickness planer but, the video showed he could get very thin pieces and no snipe.

[David King]

Art,
That's how I do it. My sled has a vacuum hold down and strips of sandpaper for added grip. It works best with the open-ended sanders. It's very easy to nick the vacuum hose on the planer if you aren't careful .

[Art Davila]

Art,
That's how I do it. My sled has a vacuum hold down and strips of sandpaper for added grip. It works best with the open-ended sanders. It's very easy to nick the vacuum hose on the planer if you aren't careful .

Do you have any pics of the sled in use? Where did you get the design, or did you design it your self?

[David King]

Art, there's really nothing to it. Sealed baltic birch ply with some slots milled into it in rectangles that match the length and width of the parts to be milled, in this case violin sides. There's a fair amount of leakage so you need a good pump to keep up or you'll spend all your time trying to stop the leaks and wishing you'd used mounting tape instead. I have smaller 1/2" thick cast acrylic plates I use in the milling machine to thickness things like cavity covers and headstock veneers. My pump is a used Gast rotary vane 1/4 HP that runs on 220V and sits on a 20 Gal compressor tank. It pulls about 24"Hg at 1/2CFM I think. The 1/3Hp version is much better if you have a choice.

[Greg Martin]

Yes any piece abrasive sanded should be hand sanded with one step lower grit . This was taught to us as young furniture makers and has worked out the best ever since.

[Mark Fogleman]

I'm just curious:
Has anyone ever used toothed or serrated planer blades?
Let's say you took a set of knives and ground a series of notches 3mm apart, sharpened
and offset them on the cutter-head.
Do you think that would allow you to thickness down to .1"-3mm or so?
Would you dare try such a thing?

You can always use a few small pieces of double stick tape and tape the top to a flat piece of 1/4-3/4 plywood/MDF if planing thin wood is a concern.

I've never seen toothed blades on a power planer. Are you trying to do the same thing as using a toothed hand plane on wild/swirly grain? It could work and be much cheaper and less hassle than converting to a Byrd style cutter head. It wouldn't work in the DW735 or any other planer using indexed blades unless made to spec and at a cost to allow it to be disposable.