Thread: Millcraft Thicknesser

Any chance of a few more pics to see all of the machine. By its lines I would guess it was new in the 50s.

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The back fence , dust extractor and the ruler were added. The dust extractor is essential.

I have just acquired one of these but it is set up with three cutters to be a planer thicknesser instead of a sander thicknesser. Anyone out there know anything about Milcraft and whether their thicknesser was both sold as a sander and planer thicknesser?

That’s an interesting point.
I had a 30” bole many years ago.
It was from an old print shop and used to trim the type.
Had two blades, I tried it on timber and for ever revolution a1/4” or so of stuff disappeared!
It scared the hell out of me so I added an MDF face disc and stuck on sandpaper to give me a big disc sander.
Does the Millcraft have feed or do you just push the timber thru by hand?
H

I used to have one that looked exactly the same but was set up as a 4 inch post thicknesser. Had a 3 blade thicknesser head but no power feed. You had to push it through manually. I don't recall if it had a brand label.

I got one of these Milcraft (not Millcraft) thicknesser versions recently, a 6 inch cut 4 inch depth three blade cutter head.


Couldn’t find much on the internet about it until I found that one and probably the main version of it is the Sears Roebuck / Craftsman 103.1801 thickness planer. Although that is only a 2 inch depth cut, it appears to be the same as the Milcraft 4 inch depth.


This type of thicknesser is also commonly known as the “Alien Head planer” or “thicknesser” and searching that term will throw up a lot information.


Here are some quick links for more information.

Craftsman 103.1801 Planer Side View - YouTube
How do you guys like your Craftsman Alien head Planers? | The Garage Journal
https://www.google.com/search?client...ih=559&dpr=1.5

Seems that knives are still available. Set of 3 HSS Blades for Craftsman 6'' Planer, 103.1801

One of the user manuals online, which is comprehensive and readily understandable unlike modern cartoon line drawings beloved of Ryobi etc. http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/222/4778.pdf


The two handles on the nuts below the table on mine are missing, but a couple of cheap 7/8 inch ring spanners cut down do the same job.

The gap in the cutter head to access the bolt heads holding the knife wedge is too thin for any standard open end spanner I have. I tried grinding down an 8mm spanner and it worked on some but not all heads on one knife wedge, but that could be that there’s some minor deformation on the bolt head that I can’t see and isn’t giving the spanner a proper grip. My imperial 5/16 spanner didn’t fit quite right. Given it’s a roughly 1950s American machine, I’m guessing that it’ll be a 5/16 SAE spanner, which might translate to British 5/16 AF, or maybe just a metric spanner when Jupiter aligns with Mars. Whatever it is, it needs to be a lot thinner than the standard open end spanner with a head much thicker than the shaft. I have a fairly large assortment of thin spanners from various tools, pushbikes and who knows where and none of them quite fit the wedge bolts.