Woodman PT-310HH combination jointer/thicknesser

Hi all,

So a few weeks ago I acquired a woodman combo machine from the good folks at gregory machinery - this unit:

http://www.gregmach.com/product/wood...er-jointer-hh/

There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of information on the net about this machine, so thought I'd write some of my experience up... I've only had a few weekends mucking about with it do far, so call this a preliminary review. In general I really love this unit - nitpicks follow, but none of them are serious.

Setup was easy, as the unit came pretty much fully assembled, just had to get the fence and guard assembled IIRC. Having said that, the instructions aren't great, and I do actually have a couple of hand levers left that I couldn't find a place for. Only problem I really ran into was that it's not the easiest thing to get off the pallet by yourself! I also failed to notice that the outfeed roller was wrapped in plastic until the plastic started to shred after a few uses and the thicknesser stopped feeding properly, but that was my own stupid fault.

One weird thing - it comes with a 10A plug, but seems to draw more than 10A (before I got a sparky in to add a 15A socket, I tried running it off a 10A power board - nothing else on the circuit - and it tripped the cheapo protector on the board). I was expecting it to be 15A, and it seems to be, just weird that it's not a 15A plug.

The height winder and table for the thicknesser work nicely, but the lock for the height feels a little sloppy... I haven't noticed the table move at all when it's locked, so I'm hoping it's just cosmetic. The only times I've noticed snipe I suspect I may have failed to lock the height, so it seems like it does the job.

Dust collection is OK, but it sure would be nice if it came with a 6" port (although it's far from the only machine with this issue). With the conversion from jointer to planer mode, the dust port is in very different location in each mode, so getting dust extraction running to it without a long length of flexi (which kills air flow) is a pain. My current dust set up is sub-optimal, but it's still clearing chips pretty well - I'm just not confident it's picking up fine dust.

My long term plan is to run separate connections from my dust trunk to minimise the flexi involved. That will mean significant extra pain disconnecting and reconnecting the dust hose when changing modes... But to be fair, I can't think of a good way that could be improved.

Enough with the nitpicks - the highlights of this unit:

Most importantly, the finish coming off the spiral head has to be seen to be believed. Particularly on anything other than consistent, straight grain, it's simply amazing. If you're taking shallow cuts, it almost seems like it doesn't matter if you're feeding with/against/across the grain. I do a reasonable amount of gluing up laminated turning blanks, and often don't pay as much attention as I should to grain direction, so this is great!

I haven't fed it anything really difficult as yet, but so far power doesn't seem to be an issue. It didn't even blink at taking a decent cut off a piece of quite hard bloodwood that was maybe 20cm across.

I haven't used it for anything super critical in jointer mode so far, but from what little I have done, the tables came out of the box very close to co-planar, and haven't moved. I'll update it if I run into problems in that area.

The other really nice part is the noise, or lack thereof... I almost think the motor is almost silent and all you can hear is the cutter head acting as a tiny, very expensive fan. Only thing that's slightly worrying is that when the dusty is running, I suspect it might be possible to not notice the machine is on as well.

I'll update if I notice anything new!

Cheers,

Danny

Quick update - found a problem which was I think causing my issues with dust collection. There's a moving panel in the hood that redirects air flow to the middle of the hood in thicknessing position, compared to letting it flow out to the end when jointing - that was being sucked part way into the jointing position when it should have been thicknessing.

I use it as a thicknesser way more often than a jointer, so for now i have just resorted to taping it in place when thicknessing, and my dust collection is significantly improved. Will think of a better fix one day!

G'day Danny. I am considering the Woodman machine. Do you have any further thoughts since your last post ? Still happy ?
Cheers
Greg

Very happy! Only update I can add to the review is that setting up the jointer tables is a bit of a pain, but that is mainly a one-off job and from what I can tell is the case on every jointer unless they're reeeaaaallly expensive. I most often use it as a thicknesser so it's possible I wouldn't notice any issues.

I have run into a couple of projects where it would have been convenient to be able to thickness down to a lower minimum height (the minimum height for thicknessing is about 4mm IIRC, a little more than what the specifications say), so I am thinking about whether or not I should put a bit of flat material (probably metal or some sort of plastic) across the thicknesser table to both increase the length of the table and deal with that problem. But that hasn't come up often and would be easy to deal with if it did.

I've just taken possession of mine ordered a few months ago. Looking forward to using it but waiting for my sparky to install a 15amp point in the shed. Don't suppose there's a manual one can download before I play with it? Also I vaguely recall being told this was a rebadged someother Euro machine. True?

I haven't seen an electronic version of the manual, but I also don't recall there being anything exciting in the manual! It's a pretty intuitive machine to use.

I know this is an old thread, but here is a link to an overseas version of the manual that is very close.