Oh crap !

[Glenn.Visca]

Spent some time over the weekend putting fresh knives in my jointer and thicknesser.

Sat down with dial gauge and some tunes on the digital radio, set each jointer knife .001" proud of the outfeed table, gave the dovetails some lube, bit of a wipe down and a shot of compressed air to blow away some accumulated rubbish.

Today, I set about machining some 15 year old old 90x45 MGP10 I had in the shed. As I made the 1st pass, I could hear an uncharacteristic chatter, and thought one of the blades must have been slightly proud of the rest.

Part way through the second pass, I decided the chatter was too much to ignore, and began aborting the pass when B A N G !!! One of the knives shattered.

I cautiously shut the machine down, went inside and emptied my pants.

uploadfromtaptalk1432029378561.jpg

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It seems I failed to tighten all of the gib screws on that blade ... All the others were right.

I called woodfast in Adelaide whose advice was a replacement cutter head because mine was now buggered.

They suggested a price of around $1500 for a spiral head, but suggested it was hardly worth it. They no longer source 3 knife heads.

I also called woodworking warehouse in braeside, who suggested a Taiwanese spiral head for around $500.

The machine has certain sentimental value. So I am not that keen on scrapping it. It's a circa 1940 to 1955 Woodfast 150 Model 1.

Has anyone by chance retrofitted a spiral into an old machine ? Any traps ? Recommendations ? All advice gratefully received !

I have the head out of the machine now so I can take it with me to compare against new heads.

Oh ... A new pair of jocks might be nice too !!

[elanjacobs]

Firstly, HOLY CR@P!! Glad there were no injuries.

I was in charge of the retrofit of Byrd Shelix heads to our SCM S63 L'Invincible (in my opinion one of, if not THE, best thicknessers ever made) and 1994 SCM F410 jointer. Don't know the exact year for the thicknesser, but all the markings and scales are still Imperial, so I'm guessing mid-late 60s.

The changeover process itself was pretty simple and needed no specialist tools other than circlip pliers and a gear-puller to remove the drive pulley and main bearings (replace them with new ones, you'll need to have them professionally pressed on unless you have a press), but some of the parts needed 2-4 of us to lift and move.

The jointer head was off-the-shelf and went in with no fuss, the thicknesser head had to be custom made (at a cost of about $5k) and gave us a bit of grief.

Long story short; they sent us some drawings of heads for later model S63s to see if any matched ours, none did so I sent back a drawing with the correct measurements which, for whatever reason, they ignored (despite several emails to confirm that they were working from my measurements and not theirs) and several months later (that's another story) a box arrived from the USA with a head that wouldn't fit. Fortunately, it was on the large side of wrong and we were able to just have it re-machined at a local engineering shop and they agreed to deduct that cost from the cost of the head. I have to give full credit to the Australian rep for how he handled the whole situation with production delays and stuff ups.

Allow a couple of days to do the swap, possibly longer depending on how long you have to wait to get the new bearings pressed on. If you go with a spiral or helical head (they are two different things) your machine will essentially be future-proof, just depends if you want to invest that much money. It's definitely one of the best investments we've made.

The biggest "trap" is if you have to have a head custom made. Just make sure you and they are on the same page and working to the same drawing and, of course, have everything in writing.

[Opelblues2]

carn't help with the jocks, but I feel you "O Crap"

[auscab]

Your lucky Glen !!
You didn't die . Or even get hit.

I have a friend who lost his thumb and most of his first two fingers on a nice little Woodfast buzzer.
It chewed them all off in a flash.
He was pushing a piece that was too small across.

Any way, I hope your now a triple checker.






What about looking for another Woodfast machine for the parts . There are two in Vic ATM on Gumtree and they do constantly turn up .
How wide is the head on a 150 ? from that date ? is it a 6 "

I did a bearing change on a 6" woodfast and the bearings were held in two blocks that were screwed into the machine, here is a picture , it has 4 gib screws across the head same as yours.
I think the bearing blocks may make changing one from another machine easy ?

The links .

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/alexa...zer/1079640327

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/werri...ner/1076337265


Rob

[Glenn.Visca]

Thanks Rob ..

Despite my anger, I am quite thankful that I caused no harm. I have already given myself a wonky middle finger courtesy of a Makita Router some 15 years ago, and I do mot relish a repeat episode.

You have described the head accurately. It's a 150mm which is quite interesting because Woodfast themselves have told me its a 1940 to 1955 model. I would have expected 6" from that era.

Since my first post. I have had more discussions with Woodworking Warehouse, and I can get a Byrd segmented head for 580.

You describe the head accurately. 2 blocks held in with bolts from underneath the body. 4 screws per gib, but no gib plate or Jack screws. The knives are held in by direct tension from the gib screws. Well ... they used be ... [emoji50]

Much appreciate the gumtree links. The first one appears the same era ... But a longer bed or wider I think. The second is a youngster by comparison. At face value, I think both would be a good buy, buy I think I am going to opt for the segmented head.

[elanjacobs]

Dangerous move going to the Byrd head, you'll want to change your thicknesser as well pretty soon

[Glenn.Visca]

So by the sounds of it elanjacobs you like the Byrd segmented head ?

[elanjacobs]

I'd say it's the best invention since carbide-tipped saws.

[Glenn.Visca]

Stock of new segmented heads landed in country Friday, so ordered mine. Hopefully it arrives this week ... Yipeee !

[Glenn.Visca]

Got my segmented head week before last. Trip down to local bearing place for some new bearings and got them on no problems. Of course, my original cutter head had a flat to take the grub screw on the original pulley, whereas the new on has a key way, so off to the the bearing place again to get a new pulley and some key steel. Mounted up - all good.

However, I must say, aligning the outfeed table to be about .001" lower than the cutter is easier said than done. As soon as I tighten up the gib screws on the table, it moves about .010" give or take - and even then - the amount the table moves depends on how much we tighten the gib screws.

I got the table to within what I think is about .002".

Ran my first batch of real timber through it today - some Vic Ash. VERY VERY quiet. Finish is good - but if you look down the length of the timber, the "stripes" that some folks talk about are visible. But - no worse - possibly a little better than the original 3 blade cutter. Tear out is MUCH improved/eliminated.

However, I am getting snipe - so clearly the cutters are too high / outfeed too low. But more interestingly, it seems I am machining wind INTO the timber. If I put a set of winding sticks on a length about 4' long - there seems to be a smidge of wind.

Some questions for you all.

1. Any words of advice on methods to align the outfeed table accurately ?

2. I suspect the wind is coming in because the head and the outfeed table (and/or infeed table) are not truly co-planar. I never had this with the original head - because one could adjust the blades individually to be coplanar with the outfeed table. Not so with the segmented head. PITA to shim the outfeed table ... Any ideas ?


Thoughts / comments welcomed !

[elanjacobs]

I noticed a similar issue with ours, it's out by about 2-3 thou over the width but it hasn't caused enough of a problem to bother fixing.
Since you didn't have a problem before, your tables should be co-planar so can you shim the cutter bearing housings instead? That might be the easier way.

On the bright side, you'll only ever have to align everything once

[Glenn.Visca]

Hmmm ... Thanks Elan ... Will give that a go.

[Glenn.Visca]

I am changing my judgement on the segmented head.

Having run some Vic ash across the jointer with the segmented head, and then passing through the thicknesser, which has a freshly set of sharpened straight knives, the finish from the segmented head is quite impressive.

By comparison, negligible tear out, handles reversing grain with ease, knots etc. Very very good indeed.

[Pat]

And when are you going to replace the Thicky head?

[elanjacobs]

I am changing my judgement on the segmented head.

Having run some Vic ash across the jointer with the segmented head, and then passing through the thicknesser, which has a freshly set of sharpened straight knives, the finish from the segmented head is quite impressive.

By comparison, negligible tear out, handles reversing grain with ease, knots etc. Very very good indeed.

You can even run endgrain if you want to with practically zero tear out, but you'll kill the cutters pretty quickly. Don't ask how I know, just trust me