Thread: slab leveling thingy

Carl, have you thought about this

1. Find an area that won't be disturbed that you can set up as a permanent resaw and slab finishing area.
2. Lay 4 concrete blocks/footingsabout 300 square in the ground at the place where your rail supports will go these need to all be perfectly level with each other.
3. Make a heavy duty bench or get a large log that has a pipe or rot in it (so you won't want it) and secure the bench to the ground between the rails making it dead level to match the footings or open up the worthless log and leave it in place permanently as a bench.
4. Engrave onto your uprights the level at which you open the log up at or the level at which the bench it at so you can easily find it.
5. Buy or have made up a planer head to fit the lucas.

This was you have a permanent setup that makes resawing and slab finishing easy to do.

that would solve most of the dificulties with the lucas planner blade.

but i still have to spend the time changing the blade over and moving teh mill onto the space.

and i am verry quickly runnign out of space to store logs and sawn timber. i may be on 48 acres but all but a 20 x 60 pad (used to be a hores arena) is to steep to do anyhting but grow stuff.

this is good keep the ideas coming im sure there will be a perfect solution out there. that is not buying teh wood wizz or slab master.

Carl, I use the Lucas planer blade all the time. It takes me about 10 minutes to change over from blade to planer and the same to change back (normally do it while I'm having a cuppa). Then all you have to do is adjust the planer to level which takes about 2 minutes when you how many turns it takes on the adjustment bolt. One you've done it a few times you'd be surprised how little time it takes. I just add into the hourly rate anyway.
If you haven't got another log to put the slab on just cut a couple of heavy bearers, say 8" x 8" and dress them with the planer prior to putting the slab on. This doesn't take long once the disc is on. Then drop the slab on, and raise the mill, dress one side level then flip the slab and rotate it 180 degrees in the mill.
I can dress a lab to about +/- 1mm parallel all round using this method.

Oh and the finish is as good as a thicknesser if the small blades are sharp

Hope I don't hijack this thread but I made a slab finisher using a router and it is a dismal failure.I mounted the router on a frame which ran on rails.After a pass I move the router over a bit and make another pass.
Here's the problem,after each pass,I had a step going up.Not much of a rise but noticable.So after 15 passes the last pass ended up being a couple of mm higher than the first and I have no idea why.The router depth adjustment didn't move,nor the frame,nor the rails and the slab.I had a new 40mm finishing bit and I didn't think I was taking too much off each pass and I was going slow.The router must be the problem because nothing else could move and yet it didn't creep up like the surface of the slab suggested it did.Frustrating.

I'm inclined to suspect the guide rails might not be stiff enough

No the guide rails are very rigid.I suspected the router frame but the steps would go down not up.

try another router, maybe theres slop in the vertical rods it slides up & down on.

Is the cutter face square with the router base?

I'm like Mike on this one, I dunno what the problem is. It's bloody simple to do. No fancy gizmo's, gimmicks etc

Last year I even had some RAAF fella drive from Brissy to Gympie with a 450mm dia bit of burl to level it - purely because no-one around him was bothered or could do the job?

At the end of the day I reckon it's the difference between an owner and an operator...

At $1,000 I'd want to try the planing head before buying it,but if it does what it has been reported to do - no worries.

I currently get slabs dressed/sanded/made parallel for $23 per square metre, based on the largest face of the slab, an excellent job and a decent price. As an example an average of 1 m wide, 4.4 m long would be a cost of $101.20 to make it parallel and leave it with a sanded finish, imagine doing it yourself and what you'd have to expend in time and $'s to do that? It just doesn't make sense to do it another way???

Watch this space!!!!!

I currently have a burl slab (approx 1m dia) that a fella wants me to dress. As soon as this howling smoky southerly abates I'll set up the mill with the disc from scratch and photograph each stage and post them for your viewing pleasure.

(Gee I hope I don't stuff it up)

$3300 for teh wood wizz lucas attachment.

so it seems like you have 2 practical choices,
get a lucas planer
or
make up yopur own router attachment
I found some large economical router surface cutters last night in the us.

I was looking for replaceable insert cutters but they are mega bucks, a couple of these 2 3/4" cutters at $45.68 would be the go for surfacing.

how much is the planer disc these days Carl?

Planer disc from Lucas is around $1,000 I seem to recall. for me that's almost 50 sq metres of leveling and sanding before I have 'bought' one by paying the local guy...

You could always investigate buying the largest carbitool cutter head with replaceable insert and have an adaper made up so you can bolt it to the Lucas head. Might be a viable option.