I was asked that question today and couldn't come up with an intelligent answer since i don't know how it operates.My friend has the oppurtunity to buy a new planer which has only one blade in it for $299.00 and asked for an honest opinion. I told him it had to be junk. I can't see a single bladed planer lasting very long opinions? anyone?
Dan Are we Talking Thickness Planer ??? If so how do they get the head to be balanced, I have never heard of one, even with all the imports. I would stand back on this untill I knew more about the company and the dynamics of the unit,
He can get the Ryobi at HD for I think 259.00 Knock Ryobi all anyone wants to but they invented the benchtop planer with the AP10 I just ran some 4/4 rough sawn mahogany thru the one that i have been torturing for at least 12 to 13 years maybe even longer. This machine is just to dumb to die.
George
What brand/model is this thing? Seems I recall Makita or someone building an odd machine some years ago. It had only one blade and, well, it was basically a big powered PLANE, but not a planer. Remember seeing ads for it but never found one at a retailer. May have been one of those ideas that looked real good on the drawing board? Anyone else remember something along like this?
DexAZ
A'yup. It did indeed happen and if memory serves me Hitachi also had one. They had a fixed blade set at an angle to the table and would shave off a full thickness of veneer across the width of the board. You might do a search of some of the luthier (stringed instrument makers Leon) sites to see if you can find a picture of one.
If this is indeed what the friend is looking at I'd snatch it up at $299 and eBay it then take that money and buy a brand new (insert lunch box planer here) and a brand new (insert name of cabinet saw here). The left over proceeds would probably go nicely towards the down payment on a new shop building.
There was also a write up in Fine Wooddorking magazine. I want to say it was late 80's/early 90's.
UA100
Well, since the name of the game is CPI (cuts per inch) I suppose if the feed was slow enough and the blade RPM was fast enough...............................
Of course just how long a single blade doing all the work would last is a good question.
But, with De Walt and Delta coming out with their new two speeds, throw in a couple of bucks more and he can do a hell of a lot better with one of their single machines.
Unisaw A100
I got a wild hair and thumbed through some Fine Wooddorkings and guess what, OK, I didn't find the write up but I did finds some ads from Issue 38 (Jan./Feb. 1983).
The Makita was the Model LP2501 which had a 9 3/4" width of cut and 180 feet per minute feed rate.
The Hitachi was the Model F 8-700 which had a 9 27/32" width of cut, a 1/8" max. cut and the blade shifted from 0 to 60 degrees.
No prices were given.
I Googled and came up empty.
UA100
Try Issue 13, November 1978, p. 83.
Also search terms = "planers fixed knife".
aka "super surfacer".
Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:
That was a short write up on a luthiers get together where the author made mention of seeing the machine in action. He only called it out as "a Japanese machine". Remember that this was back in the day when names like Makita and Hitachi were just coming around and the Ryobi AP10 wasn't even on the market. Oh, and Jet, you wouldn't wish one of those on a syphilitic dog.
The article I remember had a picture and went into some detail.
I'm off the case. I figure if it is the questioned planer then it's up to the guy who brought up to speak up if he wants more info.
UA100, who did subscribe to Fine Wooddorking with Issue 11 or 12 and cannot believe how time has flown...
OK, I found it, sort of.
In FWW On Woodworking Machines there is an article by Paul Bertorelli called "Super Surfacers".
Goes into Makita LP 2501 and Hitachi FA-700. Since it was Bertorelli it was prolly pre-1984 but I don't... (tom gets pissed and goes into the stacks...)
OK Issue 38, January 1983, p94.
(tom wonders why fww can't get their shit together as far as indexes go since this was listed in neither the print index or the website index which i think sorta sucks and shows a lack of attention to detail that is pretty damned sad in a woodworking rag...)
Real Email is: tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet Website:
Weird. That's the same issue I cited showing the ads. Had I only leafed a couple/few pages more.
I'm reading you 5 X 5 on this and I'm blaming Anatole Burkin. I get no warm fuzzies from the guy.
UA100
UA100 complains:
Actually, Anatole is a good guy. Good questions at press conferences.
Charlie Self "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. " Dorothy Parker
is this it?
sending to Mars for future use, if it survives the "landing".
OK, I wanted to be out but being it's Bridger asking...,
The aforementioned machines looked at first blush like any other planer. The "cutter head" is/was on top. The bed (below/natch) looked more or less like any other planer.
The head held a flat cutter in a revolving fixture (flat/parallel to the bed) with the sharp edge towards the operator. Imagine a giant Stanley No. 3 fixed above a table. The wood was introduced to the planer just like any other planer, passed beneath the head and a shaving was taken off the whole width. The operator could/would stand there watching the shaving peel away. Imagine toilet paper coming from the roll.
I think most of these machines were snatched up by luthiers for obvious reasons.
The initial buzz was something along the lines of a machine that produced a perfect finish but for conventional use (someone planing/not needing veneers) the "waste" could be something of a pain. Imagine all your planer shavings having to be "rolled" up. Imagine the questions on WreckWooddorking on how to dispose of this "waste".
It should be noted, both machines came equipped with long infeed/outfeed table/rollers which I suspect had to be used otherwise I suspect the feed wouldn't go right, i.e., the motor is trying to force the board through a fixed knife, it also didn't need to be trying to hold the cantilevered board flat at the same time.
UA100, wishing he could see one in the wild when he has his digi-pitcher taker...
Take down all information, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Take a digital picture or two if you can.
Oh, and in case it wasn't/hasn't been brought up. could it be a case of the machine has a two knife/three knife cutter head and the current owner is too much of an idiot to realize it needs/takes more?
Stranger things have/will happen.
Well, it does/did beat the hell out of most of the traffic the wreck sees, but then that could just be me.
UA100
[snip]
In days of old when knights were bold ... I saw one up close and personal at Pleasant St. Machinery right here in river city (aka DeKalb, IL). The proprietor was Ben Rock, estwhile purveyor of fine used machinery (okay, some not so fine). Ben thought very highly of his goods, and priced them accordingly. My memory is extremely hazy on details here, but said machine was priced to sell somewhere in the 2K range IIRC. I didn't get to see it "in action," but it did make for an interesting trivia-type reply to the wreck when some ignorant neanderthal claimed no motorized machine could plane like a handplane. Silly savage. :)
Apart from being fixed-blade, there's also a slim chance that it has a rotating helical blade.
Whee! I'll bet *that* would be fun to sharpen!
A facitous answer: for dimensioning a Moebius strip.
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