Shopsmith Forums

frank81 wrote:Some of us consider "going to the city" a vacation. Don't take it for granted. I mean, your outdoors/fishing/hunting opportunities are few and overcrowded but at least you see more than the same 5 or 6 people in a given week.

I know what "going to the city" means. I was raised in Campbell, Mo.

BuckeyeDennis wrote: Now I have a SS planer, which would seem to be a quick and easy way to lose the old finish. But I've read that you should not use the planer blades on finished wood.

I don't know about all finishes but your reading was excellent advice against planing painted wood. I just won't try it on varnished surfaces.

A year or so ago I helped a neighbor replace his planer blades after he used the machine to remove deck paint from the old wood. He only got about 30 feet of planks planed before the blades gave out. The blades were so abused you couldn't even imagine they were once sharp.

charlese wrote:I don't know about all finishes but your reading was excellent advice against planing painted wood. I just won't try it on varnished surfaces.

A year or so ago I helped a neighbor replace his planer blades after he used the machine to remove deck paint from the old wood. He only got about 30 feet of planks planed before the blades gave out. The blades were so abused you couldn't even imagine they were once sharp.

This evening, I found the admonition that I had read against planing finished wood -- right in my SS planer manual. Pro Planer safety instruction #20: "Never plane painted or varnished wood, plywood, or particle board - these materials will ruin your planer knives."

Of course, OEM's are notoriously overcautious when it comes to liability and warranty issues, so I Googled "planing finished wood" to see what real woodworkers have to say. There was a wide variety of opinions. Some finishes apparently do dull the knifes very quickly. Others not so much, especially if the first pass is a deep one that enters the wood from beneath the finish. HSS knives vs. carbide may also affect your results.

Here's a link to a thread with an interesting and informative assortment of opinions and experiences: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread. ... med-lumber.

It seems to boil down to a tradeoff between the value of the reclaimed wood, and the cost of accelerated blade wear. The hard part is predicting the blade wear.

At times I run a lot of finished wood through my planer. I try to save a batch back and do it all at once and avoid doing it when the blades are freshly sharpened. I do it outside or at least with the chips blowing out a big door and when the wind is right. I sometimes use a big old squirrel cage furnace blower at my back. I also make it a point to wear a dust mask.
If there is enough extra material I make a fairly heavy first cut. My planer is a 240V 5 HP 12" and I have (but not normally) taken off as much as a quarter of an inch in a pass. It uses re-sharpen-able blades and I grind my own.
So far I have not had any problems. I do have a couple of metal detectors for checking for nails, checking logs for the sawmill and finding treasures to make me rich (the rich thing hasn't kicked in yet ).
I just realized that I don't have any digital pictures of it... It's shoved back in a corner behind the lumber rack. Next time I get it out I need to take some digital pictures of it. Either that or dig out some old regular pictures of it but that could take weeks of hard work.
I just did a Google search and found one that sold (not mine) that you can scroll down the page for pictures of it.
I haven't had much time to spend in the woodshop getting it organized lately. I just run down there and cut something I need and hurry back to the other job. Now that the weather is stabilizing I hope to get the big door opening in the block wall framed in and a new door up to replace the "temporary" panels that now cover the opening. Pictures coming soon.


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Foley-Belsaw-Planer-Molder-220-Volt-Single-Phase-5-HP-Model-984-/261198367726