Thread: Hand-held planer to clean up old timber?

Yes, I've got an old Makita electric hand plane and that's pretty much all it gets used for. The blades are completely stuffed but it still takes off the paint and enough of the crap to see what's underneath.

Highly recommended.

You can buy blades for them on ebay for almost nothing. I think I got 10 for $22 or something, they are top quality TC blades and work a treat.

I use mine for all sorts of butchery. Makita and of course parts can be had. Only makita machine I have but I'm quite impressed with it. I mostly buy bosch...

Yes a hand held is great for cleaning up old timber. Gets it to the stage where you are not scared to put it through the planer. I have a makita hand held and that is about all it is used for now. Even an el cheepo elect plane will do for this. In fact the less it costs the better then no tears if it hits a nail or two.
Regards
John

Yes I agree too after a recent similar experience. The hand planer was invaluable for this job. I also found that connecting it too one of my dust collectors in the workshop made it a much more pleasant experience.

Cheers
Michael

Part of the secret to taking a planer where no planer should go is to take deep cuts so that you get under the paint. Really old enamel paint is so hard and kills the blades.

Once you are down to wood you can then make finer cuts or move to thicknesser or planer.

I have a Super Cheap planer for exactly this purpose. You can get a cheap planer for about the price a resharpening of your thicknesser, planer or jointer blades.

Thank you, everybody. Looks like a tool crawl is on tomorrow.

i've only ever worked on recycled or "thrown out" timber!
the best thing i've done to eliminate sweat beads from the forehead on a 10 degree day was to invest in an $60 metal detector from Carbatec. also the Festool Rotex takes care of the paint in no time. the timber comes up like brand new.
regards
the block

I've started using more recycled timber and dispite my best efforts have ran over a few nails with the thicknesser, but those blades had done a fair bit of work already and I now plan to put them back on for getting rid of the grey timber so I can see whats underneath.

Even then it's possible to find the end of a broken nail in a hole you thought was empty.
There can also be a fair bit of dirt in the cracks of recycled timber.

One of those metal detectors seems the way to go.
Perhaps I should listen to my own advise.

Arn't Tersa heads the ones with all the little blades? Can't you just turn them around?

I initially use a panel beaters disc sander with a 26 grit it handles paint and grit and nails.

i also use a makita...
does the job....
gotta hate those broken off nails... not a nice surprise at all...
with heavily painted old timber i tend to reach over for my old 1inch chiesel...
i grab it at the tip and the handle and drag it along the the paint...
ussually that is enough the start chipping away and find the heads of any nails....
or ill just tap down along the paint with a hammer...
really depends on my mood haha

Would recommend the metal detector too.

I recyled a nice length of euc from our kitchen renovation. It had been dark varnished, I went over it looking for nails and figured I'd found all of them. Then passed the detector over it and found half a dozen more. Not only did this save some blade grief, it also indicated that the piece was going to need more tarting up after denailing than was expected and so not really worth the effort.

My worst surprise was finding a nail punch deeply embedded in a log dumped on a nature strip. Trashed two band saw blades before sorting this - slow learner (then).