Thread: Running painted wood through the jointer/thicknesser?

The paint will dull the cutters extremely quickly. I once had to send a pack of pink primed 42x42 LOSP through a four sided moulder just to remove the paint. I had to sharpen the knives a few times for the job, and I had to continually adjust the cutter heads because the knives were being worn away leaving the cutting edges set below the level of the tables and fences.

Taking a deeper pass so that the knives simply punch through the paint rather than sliding across the surface will help significantly.

Originally Posted by Kuffy

Taking a deeper pass so that the knives simply punch through the paint rather than sliding across the surface will help significantly.

This is one instance where being "greedy" pays off, much kinder to the knives with one deep pass. If you have a spiral cutter head I would pass on putting the decking through the A3.

Hope you have a decent metal detector! Nails always get missed no matter how fastidious you are at denailing.

If it's leaded paint, even with a decent DC you might consider wearing a respirator?

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

If you have a spiral cutter head I would pass on putting the decking through the A3.

Why do you say this, I would have thought the carbide cutters would be ideal for this job because if the cutters suffer damage they can be rotated or have I missed something?

+1 for deep cuts, it will minimise the distance travelled through the paint.

Titanium dioxide is the main component of most paints and it's quite abrasive, so carbide is going to last the longest and is probably cheaper than sharpening HSS multiple times in the long run

When I have recycled painted boards I have skimmed them first with a handheld electric planer before moving on to stationary machinery. The carbide blade inserts in them seem to last for a long time bashing away at rubbish and are easily replaced. Long lengths are fairly easy to handle supported across a few sawhorses and the work can be done outside.

Wot Franklin said. The handheld has tc blades that are cheap to replace. Cleaning up old wood is the reason I have a handheld electric.
Regards
John

+1 for electric plane with carbide blades. I bought one from aldi just for this job. Save my makita for nicer work

+3 to the electric plane.

El-cheapo blades too.

My A3 has the straight bladed head (although I'm looking into getting hold of the spiral at some point). Like Chris, I'd have thought that the spiral would be a better tool for this job - one little blade to replace each time it's used to locate a nail, and they're easy to rotate as they get blunt?

I like the handheld idea too - I have an old Festool and a bosch, so SWTSMBO can get stuck in too.

If you do decide to just run 'em through the jointer and thicky, I'd suggest thicknessing 'em first, feeding them them through on an angle.

In practice this spreads the wear across the blades; if you run them "straight through" not only will you degrade one section of blade faster, but the painted sides will wear even faster, giving you what appears to be a couple of 'nicks' in the blade a board width apart..

Then joint 'em, moving the fence between passes for the same reasons.

Perhaps one could buy some el-cheapo sacrificial blades just for the job?

Bung them in, bugger them up, sharpen them with an angle grinder , repeat.

Use the good ones for the final skim?

If it's a 4 knife head, you can take one opposing pair out and just run 2 knives. Just make sure you leave the clamping bars in and tighten them in the pockets, if you take them out, the noise will be unbearable.

Just my 2c worth. Cheap hand electric planes can be got for less than a set of knives for your machine so why bother messing about with blade changes if you dont need to.
Regards
John