Thread: Adelaide Thicknesser or Planing Joinery

Can always try a few of your local "mens shed" places

I doubt you find any one who will put round through a Thicknesser, 90% of the time they will just explode into a million pieces, rough down with a plane, then you may fine someone who will put them through a wide belt sander

Helical heads will do it with minimal breakout at the back, but they don't like it and it kills the cutters (been there, done that). Your best bet will be finding a shop with a CNC that can level them for you (done that as well, works a treat).

Or build a router sled and DIY if you feel that way inclined.

I presume you mean 300-400mm not cm - otherwise they are absolutely monster rounds which wouldn't even get into most workshops, let alone a machine... ��

You need an overhead router machine like a router master

Originally Posted by elanjacobs

Helical heads will do it with minimal breakout at the back, but they don't like it and it kills the cutters (been there, done that). Your best bet will be finding a shop with a CNC that can level them for you (done that as well, works a treat).

Or build a router sled and DIY if you feel that way inclined.

Could you explain further, Elan. I would have thought stability on the CNC table would be a problem with the disks skating everywhere. The vacuum table is unlikely to work with the rough cut pourous backs, and would you have to glue the disks to a backing sheet? (But you made it work!)

I would think that a thickness sander would be a better option.

There's lots of ways to hold uneven parts, sometimes you just have to get creative.

If the outside of the piece will be trimmed, just screw through a board and vacuum that. If not, hot glue it down with packers as needed, then lay boards around it and vacuum them to prevent it sliding. There's also a wide range of side clamps available that can be screwed directly to the spoilboard, to other boards that are vacuumed down, or in T-slots if there's no vacuum table.

I also made up a "spike board" which is just a big board of 16mm white melamine with 30mm screws driven through it that large, rough milled slabs can sit on; a few good blows with a mallet help the screw points dig in. This relies on the weight of the piece to hold itself down, so probably not a good idea with small things.

As always when using slightly sketchy work holding, down spirals are your friend.

The problem with any feed through machine, be it a sander or thicknesser, is that it needs one surface to be flat so it doesn't rock on the way through. If the saw cut is good, you might get away with it, but that's not always the case.

A router sled would be my preferred option, do a search on router sleds and you will find that they are rather easy to make.

Regards
Keith

Thanks everyone for your help. Have started making a router sled,

Hi, i am just curious...how thick are these?