Thread: Clean up timber before thicknessing

Yep!

Either that or a scraper that I have, which is a bit quicker and quieter than the belt sander, but requires more elbow grease.

I also have a metal detector which I run over recycled boards that might have snapped off nails in them.

If it's just one or two pieces you could get away with running it as-is, but otherwise clean it off.

I would never run painted timber through mine. For one thing paint will blunt your blades quicker, and for another you don't know what is under the paint.

Here are some of the things I have found in recycled timber:

Cup hook (probably to hold up a curtain). Thread snapped off and still embedded, puttied and painted over at some point.
Staple legs, crown broken off.
Fix out nails, rusted off but the head still just under the surface of the paint
Screws with the head snapped off

Hit any one of those and you will have a nice nick in your blades.

I'll keep going then. Hadn't thought of the scraper - I'll give that a go too. Peter

See if you can get yourself one of these:



It has a double-sided blade. They cut very aggressively so doesn't take long to strip back a board.

Bahco make a similar scraper. Tungsten Carbide blades and a brilliant design. Absolute dynamite stripping paint from wood or metal.

To be honest, I just run a metal detector over recycled timber and throw it in. Maybe it dulls the blades a bit quicker but I've just taken the old varnish off 400lm of recycled floor boards and my spiral head blades show no signs of wear. Guess it depends how valuable time is vs blades.

The metal detector is a must though.

Originally Posted by dalejw

To be honest, I just run a metal detector over recycled timber and throw it in. Maybe it dulls the blades a bit quicker but I've just taken the old varnish off 400lm of recycled floor boards and my spiral head blades show no signs of wear. Guess it depends how valuable time is vs blades.

The metal detector is a must though.

Your spiral head uses carbide inserts which are MUCH more wear resistant than standard HSS knives.
Varnish will also cause less wear than paint in general as it doesn't have metal oxides (titanium dioxide being the most common) and other minerals in it to give it colour.

Both true points. I used to have a generic gmc thicknesser with the reversible hss blades which I used throw everything through as well but blades were cheap so I just used to replace them when they were dull.

I'd also be interested to know he much paint you'd cut through. Wouldn't mind betting it's not a lot with say a 1mm cut. You'd be well under the paint surface.

Dunno..

Assuming 9000RPM cutter and 8m/min feed (ballpark numbers for a benchtop thicknesser), you get 1125 revs per metre, times 2 knives is 2250 cuts per metre. Allow 0.1mm paint thickness and you're cutting through 225mm of paint for every metre of timber.

I guess the way I was thinking of it was the timber is fed in so the feed direction is against the rotation of the cutter head. Each time the blade strikes the timber, it is presented with a clean piece of timber which is where I reckon most of your blade wear comes from. The only time it cuts through the paint is on the upcut where it's lifting the chip away.

I think it's debatable as to whether the upcut is actually forcing the blade through the paint of if it's just fracturing it off with the grain. Probably a bit of both I'd say but I reckon the vast majority of your blade wear comes from that instance where it goes from free rotation to slamming into the wood which should be paint free.

Just bouncing some ideas around here.

Whaddayarekon?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...hicknesser.gif

Nothing better than a plane to remove timber in my opinion. Now I just use a hand help electric plane, I dont have a thicknesser yet


Dave the turning cowboy

turning wood into art

Didn't even occur to me that the blade comes up rather than down.

I have to admit, I wasn't thicknessing painted timber because I'd thought this through.

I was doing it because I was lazy