Thread: Be cautious buying supposedly demo machines marked down

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Where to start - 1. the anti-kickback pawls have a habit of preventing wood passing through, they don't seem to return to an in-feed state, despite there not haveing been a kickback.

I've not experienced problems with the anti-kickback but having said that I've not had a kickback.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

2. the restriction on depth of cut either side of centre

Can you explain further what you mean?.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

4. the "dial in" thickness setting is not accurate, more like erratic.

Yep I discovered this too.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

5. the dust chute attachment is flimsy

Agreed. As a sidenote, I found using my 2hp dust collector works way better than my shopvac.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

6. uses a non-industry standard carbide insert

What insert?, you mean on the head?

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

However it does produce excellent results off the cutters

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Definitely a pretty fair assessment of the state of play. The drive train to the drive rollers seems to be an "Archilies heel" of the lunchbox style thicknessers. There is a true spiral cutter head in the Sherwood. It goes a great job, however there are a number of "features" that I dislike.

I suspect that the vulnerability is a combination of the high efficiency of the drive rollers feeding timber into the cutters at a rate which the cutters can't accept efficiently, along with plastic and light alloy gears, so something gives. No doubt this is often due to the operator taking too big a cut, or very hard timber being fed in automatically at a faster rate than is suitable, rather than any inherent fault in the machine.

The springs on my rollers apply considerable force. On the broken one which I can use as a manual feed it's very hard to push timber through the first roller at anything more than about .25mm cut. So it's likely that the powered rollers can overpower the cutter in the same way that a car engine can overpower the brakes.

It's probably not a major engineering issue to fit a protective clutch in the system to deal with this, but it might add a lot of cost that manufacturers aren't willing to bear on entry level machines. A simpler solution might be to have adjustable pressure on the rollers so that they can operate as a protective clutch and spin on the timber when there is too much resistance at the cutter, instead of destroying the drive train. There might be a 'protective clutch' in a belt driven thicknesser where the belt might slip if the cutter head encounters severe resistance, although I don't know if such machines are available in the present market.

I do know that my ancient Gilbro belt driven jointer is a lot quieter than my chain driven modern one and I'd prefer a belt driven thicknesser if it's similarly quieter.

There is an unknown in this, being what sort of timber are these machines designed to cut? I expect they could cut pine all day every day for a very long time without problems, but probably not jarrah and harder woods.

A mate of mine worked for a major national tool and plant hire company many years ago. The company bought a large quantity of German made chainsaws, which had continuous problems. Turned out that the chainsaws were designed to cut pine type timber common in Europe, not Australian hardwoods. The German manufacturer’s engineer who came to Australia to sort out the problem was impressed that his company’s chainsaws managed to cut the hardwood at all, as it was way beyond design intentions.

Australia is unlikely to be a big enough market for a Chinese manufacturer to make an entry level thicknesser that can handle Australian hardwoods, so it might be that the machines are aimed at the very much larger American and European and other markets where softwoods are the main timber.

There are American, and for that matter Australian, timbers that are much harder than jarrah so it would be interesting to know from American members whether they have generic versions of this type of thicknesser, or planer in America, and how they perform there. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005...d=ekACFEEOhSCo

Originally Posted by EagerBeaver71

I've not experienced problems with the anti-kickback but having said that I've not had a kickback.
I've not had kick back, but the pawls prevent a thin board (5-6mm) from entering the machine


Can you explain further what you mean?.
There is a plate in front of the cutter head that is machined to allow for a thicker cut in a restricted width, wider boards must be processed with "lighter cuts."

Yep I discovered this too.


Agreed. As a sidenote, I found using my 2hp dust collector works way better than my shopvac.

I use a dust extractor. so the restriction is not helpful.

What insert?, you mean on the head?

Cutter inserts


Agreed.

Comments added into post.

Originally Posted by 419

On my limited experience with a standard bladed version of the same machine, sold by another major tools outlet under its house brand,which seized a bearing on a feed roller which then destroyed a drive gear in the drive system, and from what I've seen of comments by others about the same generic machines, it seems to be one of those lucky dip budget / entry level items where you can get a lemon or a durable and reliable machine.

That doesn't explain the drive chain snapping without any load on the cutter head. Methinks an issue with gearing design would be a more likely explanation with my machine.

Otherwise I agree with your overall assessment of "lunch box" thicknessers. Built to meet a price point.

I feel that woodies have been treated as schmuks by our major retailers for a long time, as you case illustrates, and they know that it highly unlikely that an aggrieved customer will have much success seeking a remedy other than what the retailer "gives" them.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Methinks an issue with gearing design would be a more likely explanation with my machine.

Along with general machine design; material quality; and manufacturing and quality control standards.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

I feel that woodies have been treated as schmuks by our major retailers for a long time, as you case illustrates, and they know that it highly unlikely that an aggrieved customer will have much success seeking a remedy other than what the retailer "gives" them.

I seem to be starting too many comments with 'in fairness to the retailers', but in fairness to them they're operating in a very small market in global terms and they choose the products they import and brand from what's available on Alibaba or whatever, perhaps not from the standard they, and especially we, want. Against that they could specify better standards but from what I understand of much Chinese manufacturing to Australian specifications you need your own quality manager on site, which isn't commercially justifiable for the relatively small volume of woodworking machines coming to Australian retailers, probably even if they combined to impose a standard. The end result is that you and I probably get what we could have bought unseen direct from Alibaba, but without the massively prohibitive transport cost for an individual machine.

As for aggrieved customers fighting retailers and others who will embark upon self-destructive legal trench warfare that makes no commercial sense, the best - or worst - and perhaps silliest example I've seen was a legitimate dispute with a major house builder following an independent inspector's defect report before handover. The report identified numerous problems, some quite serious. During a meeting between the builder's representatives and the customers one of the builder's frustrated representatives yelled to the customers, quite unaware of the irony, "You do realise that none of this would have happened if you hadn't got that f%^&ing independent inspection report?".

419, it seems you have quite a few stories to tell and a wealth of experience in the field of consumer complaints / protection. I agree 100% with your comments. Much as we don't like the deal we get at times I'm still thankful that we at least have access to markets, reasonable quality for the money in general, and that we are complaining about first world problems.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

419, it seems you have quite a few stories to tell and a wealth of experience in the field of consumer complaints / protection. I agree 100% with your comments. Much as we don't like the deal we get at times I'm still thankful that we at least have access to markets, reasonable quality for the money in general, and that we are complaining about first world problems.

Exactly.

Also, the range of affordable woodworking and other machinery available to us nowadays is massive compared with what was available even thirty years ago. A lot of it isn't top quality but generally it does the job for a hobbyist.

I think I've mentioned elsewhere on this site that when renovating a house I found some late 1950s newspapers used as floor covering underlay, which included advertisements for electric drills. The same newspapers also had job ads. The price of the drills was about a week or more of a carpenter's wage. Now we can buy good quality cordless drills for less than half a carpenter's daily wage. Or a corded drill for very much less than that.

Originally Posted by Mobyturns

Where to start -

1. the anti-kickback pawls have a habit of preventing wood passing through, they don't seem to return to an in-feed state, despite there not haveing been a kickback.
2. the restriction on depth of cut either side of centre
3. the depth of cut indicator does similar to 1. above
4. the "dial in" thickness setting is not accurate, more like erratic.
5. the dust chute attachment is flimsy
6. uses a non-industry standard carbide insert

However it does produce excellent results off the cutters

Slightly OT, but on my segmented head non spiral thicknesser I thought 1 and 3 above were just me, albeit both are eased somewhat by feeding the wood in at an angle. Thanks for posting. I feel a bit better now.