New toy in the woodlot

[Harry]

Got this put together today. Its just a 13". Eventually I would like to get a much larger but this is going to step up quality and speed on the things I am making now.

[Harry]

In the background is the profile of a leg for a lounge I am working on.

Also got a 3 1/2" battery handheld planer.

Next big tool on the wish list is a large bandsaw for cutting those profiles for benches and lounges. The way I am doing it now just takes so long so I keep investing in upping the quality and increasing the output.

There is a 3rd party that makes a replacement drum for these surface planers that use 60 indexable cutters mounted in a helical pattern. They are about $400 but there is a lot of upsides like carbide inserts, 4 cutting sides, less contact on the surface at any given instant and if you get a chip in a blade its just in the line of that one spot so no need to replace the entire 13" long blades.

[Rasper]

Planers and band-saws. I once owned a boatyard on the Chesapeake Bay where I built wooden boats. We had a Fay and Egan 311 Lightning band-saw exactly like this:



and a 26 inch Fay and Egan planer. It weighed as much as a small car. I poured new Babbitt bearings for the main cutter shaft. I powered it with the engine from a 1953 Plymouth. The Plymouth had been sitting in the back yard of some old people in town for years. It had 70,000 miles on it. They had a new Pontiac. I bought it for fifty dollars and took out the engine. It had one of those Chrysler slush-box transmissions that preceded the automatics. It was perfect for a big planer in a boat yard. I used to feed 24 inch wide white oak flitch through it and take off a quarter- inch at a pass. I sure miss those days when all of that was still possible. My liability insurance was 67 dollars a year. It would be more than that per day now, if I could even get it. And OSHA! Oh my God!

Richard

[Jammer]

I've always wanted a planer, not sure why, I don't handle much rough-cut lumber. That bandsaw is awesome, totally OSHA compliant. We can't do anything in the US anymore. It's a wonder we can build anything with all the rules and regs. We had so many SOP's (standard Operating procedures) that half of them would contradict the other half. If you follow one, you're breaking another. I think it's what they used to fire people they didn't like. Just watch a few manufacturing videos from India or China, they aren't safe at all.

[Rasper]

Manufacturing, like mining and seafaring, is not safe. To attempt to make it so would increase the cost to the point where all of the manufacturing and ships would go to other countries. Oh wait! I almost forgot. That has already happened.

An old boat-builder I used to follow wrote about his days in the big shipyards back in the war when they built minesweepers and sub chasers from wood. He said that the big bandsaws never had all of that OSHA stuff on them, and when a blade broke and came off the wheels it would sometimes wrap around him, but he never saw one hurt anyone. I doubt if those guys up in Washington sitting at a desk making up rules have never even used a bandsaw.

Richard

[greentwin]

I have a brother who is heavily invested in commercial woodworking equipment (he use to work at a woodworking machinery supply house, and so could get equipment at near wholesale costs).
He had a larger heavier planer that I used for a while, but it was really a monster.
I asked him about small planers, and he said they will do a good job, and will do a better job with very thin cuts than many of the larger and older planers.

I bought a Porter-Cable, and I like it a lot.
It is very accurate.
I did nick a blade, I think on a staple that was in a piece of wood.

The blade sets as I recall were very reasonable.
Those blades are razor sharp, and are just like handling new razor blades.
The can cut you if you just look at them.

I bought a Rigid table saw also, and it works well for making wood snap flask sides.

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[greentwin]

I use resin-bound sand, and so my flasks are often very thin custom units.
The cope and drag are only as thick as is necessary to prevent burn-through, and often the cope and drag are different thicknesses.

The resin bound sand is removed from the flask prior to pouring, with the cope and drag glued together with foundry adhesive, and then weighted on top.
I can reuse the wood flasks indefinitely, since they don't get burned during the pour.

[greentwin]

The joint on the inside closes when the flask closes, and thus I can make round cuts with the dado blade.

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[greentwin]

Here is a flask I made for the Chirp man.
Patterns made by Chirpman.
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[greentwin]

The Chirpman castings.

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