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New Toy (Tool)

Started by YellowHammer, November 22, 2017, 09:48:09 PM

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YellowHammer

Recently, thanks in large part from us visiting WDH and his operation, we invested in a 12" jointer/facer.  Since then, it had proven to be a very useful and profit generating machine, and paid for itself in very short order and increased the quality of our product at the same time.  Unfortunately, although it was one of the biggest sold through Grizzley, it proved too low a horsepower, (3 hp), too short a bed (about 7 foot) and too narrow (12").  So after much pro and con decision making, including deciding if we wanted to move on to a 5 head molder we decided that a bigger, more capable jointer was the best alternative.

Well, we ordered and finally got our new jointer, from Italy via Georgia.  We just couldn't find what we wanted from so called domestic companies, and this time we wanted the biggest and the baddest so we didn't have to upgrade again.  Its a SCM 20 inch long bed jointer, 70 inch infeed, 8 hp 3 phase motor, new Xylent cutterhead, and grooved table.  By the way, we sold our Grizzly 12 inch planer in 1 week, and had 3 buyers in line.  That was nice.
I looked at lots of old iron and didn't want a fix it project.

Here was the delivery guy and me tag teaming the crate with both the forklift and the tractor.  It's so long it needed 6 foot log forks and I only have 4 footers.  So with a little creative lifting I finally got it on the tractor forks while the Cat forklift held up the other end and the driver pulled the semi from under it.  No problems.


We got it on the ground and started uncrating. 


Chip, the company mascot, decided to jump in and help.


Then the wiring started, hooking it into the rotary phase converter without burning anything up.


Finally, installed, positioned and all the Cosmoline has been wiped off.  Here's the machine ready to go.  I'm excited to get working with it.

 
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

tule peak timber

A nice quality piece of equipment. Congratulations. Is this the 20 inch machine ?  Rob
persistence personified - never let up , never let down

Magicman

So the Dawg's new name is now Chip Cosmoline...... :D :D

Congrats on the new Toy Tool.   smiley_thumbsup
Knothole Sawmill, LLC     '98 Wood-Mizer LT40SuperHydraulic   WM Million BF Club Member   WM Pro Sawyer Network

It's Weird being the Same Age as Old People

Never allow your "need" to make money to exceed your "desire" to provide quality service.....The Magicman

barbender

Too many irons in the fire

caveman

Go big or go home (old saying).  Good looking machine.
Caveman

Sheepkeeper

It's not ready to go until you put the guard back on - safety first! Or a power feed. Keep those fingers out of harms way.
The hurry-er I go the behind-er I get.

Dan_Shade

That's nice.

Are you going to install a power feeder?
Woodmizer LT40HDG25 / Stihl 066 alaskan
lots of dull bands and chains

There's a fine line between turning firewood into beautiful things and beautiful things into firewood.

WDH

Wow....Wow....that is a nice machine.  Now you just need to tame a gorilla and teach it how to feed wide, 9/4 x 10' oak, hickory, and pecan slabs through it :)
Woodmizer LT40HDD35, John Deere 2155, Kubota M5-111, Kubota L2501, Nyle L53 Dehumidification Kiln, and a passion for all things with leafs, twigs, and bark.  hamsleyhardwood.com

Bruno of NH

YH
Your not scared
You do it right
Lt 40 wide with 38hp gas and command controls , F350 4x4 dump and lot of contracting tools

YellowHammer

Chip took my guard when he saw it looked like a big pork chop. :D

Ain't no pecan ever touching this machine!  At least while the cutters are still sharp.

Its 20 inches wide, and the Xylent cutterhead is pretty impressive.  Its not like conventional spirals, its got a very extreme spiral, about twice that of my Shelix.  Supposedly it allows easier feeding and reduced noise.  I haven't run enough boards through it yet to make a call, but its pretty quiet, and when I gave it a quick test on a cherry board edge, it hogged 1/4" off in one easy pass and felt like my old one taking 1/16" or 1/8", with very little drag.  That was pretty impressive.

My plan is to use it as a facer for our slabs and thicker, heavier stock we are now selling, and have enough muscle to clean boards up in one pass, instead of having to repeat feed and "merry go round" them.  With the long infeed table I can lay a 10 foot slab down and it's fully supported without me having to hold it.  The plan is that boards will get faced on this machine and then go into the planer which is directly downstream.  I'm getting a roller table so I can roll them off the jointer right into the planer.  That's the plan anyway, to set it up like a Stratoplane type machine, but with better straightening and more flexibility so I can edge with it also.

I have a lot of my boards planed with 3 different companies, depending on the situation, that have a varied selection of double sided planers and molders, so I have first hand experience with their limitations.  For the majority of flattening and dressing they work very well, but a certain percentage of boards defeat them and have noticeable bow remaining in them.  So we used my Grizz jointer to fix those specific grumpy boards.  We tune up the defective boards and instead of having to sell them a reduced rates, we can charge full price.  Our old setup worked well, but was slooooow, and I can't tell you how many times I was popping the breaker on my old jointer feeding too fast or taking too much cut.

At some point I will probably remount my feeder.  They have their good and bad points.  I mounted a power feed on my other jointer and learned a lot about its limitations.  They work great for thicker stock, boards that won't flex with the roller down pressure.  So 8/4 stock works fine.  It falls apart when doing thinner, more flexible 4/4 boards where the down pressure rollers of the power feed squash the board down to the bed if the board isn't completed flattened in one pass.  However, I learned that if the jointer can take enough bite to take the bow out in one pass, then the part of the board on the outfield table where the power feeder grips is completely flat, it can't flex the board and it and will remain flat.  Basically, if the amount of bow or cup in a board is less than the depth of cut, a power feed works fine.  If the depth of cut is less than the bow or cup, then it will not work so well.  So horsepower is required.   

We will see how this works out. 
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

Larry

Impressive!  I was surprised to see a pork chop.  Just assumed it would have a Euro guard.

By grooved table do you mean planed planed or something else?
Larry, making useful and beautiful things out of the most environmental friendly material on the planet.

We need to insure our customers understand the importance of our craft.

tule peak timber

persistence personified - never let up , never let down

Peter Drouin

Just want to hog wood off YH. :D :D 8)
A&P saw Mill LLC.
45' of Wood Mizer, cutting since 1987.
License NH softwood grader.

muggs

I use a Billstrum feeder on my 20 inch Oliver jointer. Works well, but I don't know if they are still in business.   Muggs

YellowHammer

Quote from: Larry on November 23, 2017, 09:11:19 AM
By grooved table do you mean planed planed or something else?

The tables are not smooth polished, they are circular ground and grooved.  I did some reading and this is supposed to greatly reduce the dragging force required to slide a wide board against the bed.  I have experienced this effect before, as a very smoothly faced board will suck down to a polished bed and be difficult to lift off.  All I can say is that it really seems to work, as the boards slide across the metal like they are on ice or a very highly waxed table.  A definite improvement. 


Surprisingly, the European guard is not offered on machines sold in the US apparently due to OSHA regulations.  I don't know why, they seem to be very effective, and I have to say that the pork chop on this thing, which is about the size of a garbage can lid, totally stinks.  The large pork chop is very cumbersome.  I will call SCM Georgia and see if they will sell me a Euro guard or maybe on of the accordion flap style pork chop.

Other than that, after running a couple hundred bdft of hard maple and cherry today in record time, all I can say is WOW, completely different league than my previous 12".  It easily took off 3/16" in one easy pass, with significantly reduced effort and noise than my previous spiral head jointer.  Its a definite one pass facer.

It also has a very balanced spring assist outfeed table, and it makes depth of cut adjustments very quick.

Quote from: Peter Drouin on November 23, 2017, 01:53:06 PM
Just want to hog wood off YH. :D :D 8)
Yep!  As much as I can as fast as I can. 8)
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

YellowHammer

Tule Peak, I've looked at the Comatic and are very interested in them.  Are the feed wheels spiked or spring fingers?  What about quality of facing.  Does it take bow out?

YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

tule peak timber

The feed wheel uses spring loaded carbide spikes.
persistence personified - never let up , never let down

Joey Grimes

94 woodmizer lt40 HD kabota 5200 ford 4000 94 international 4700 flatbed and lots of woodworking tools.

scsmith42

Wow - those jointers look like aircraft carriers! 

Nice score!
Peterson 10" WPF with 65' of track
Smith - Gallagher dedicated slabber
Tom's 3638D Baker band mill
and a mix of log handling heavy equipment.

YellowHammer

So I'm starting to get the feel for the machine.  Still dislike the pork chop.  However, the rest on the machine is eye opening. The finish on the surfaced face of the board is glass smooth.  No cutter marks or scalloping like some carbide spirals show.  Noticeably smoother than even my planer.  Lots of power, lots of room to work.

The jointing function is also a different world.  We have a straight line rip saw, but it was acting a little squirrley yesterday (I'll look at it today), so as customers would buy boards and want a straight edge, I switched to using the jointer, which is usually a waste of time edging rough sawn boards that may be out 1/4" or more.  However, this beast is a different animal.  The last customer of the day (of course) bought 26 poplar boards and wanted them edged one side.  So I went to the jointer, dropped the cut to 5/16" and ran the 8 footers through as fast as I could pick them up and run them.  Only 2 boards required a second pass, which means I took 5/8" off them in two passes.  Even the customer, an experienced woodworker, said "You're not supposed to be able to do that."



YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

DR_Buck

Yellow Hammer this is really a nice looking machine.   I'm not sure I would be comfortable around that longer cutter up ther on the top.   ::)

Question for you "WIDE" jointer guys.     Are you using these for facing and edging boards?     If for surface facing, how is this equipment better than a wide table planer?

From the pictures, it looks like the shop is a pole building and not temperature or humidity controlled.   For you guys that have shops like this, how do you avoid rust build up on the machine table surfaces?  It seems that waxing or coating the tops could become a effort if you have several machines with cast iron or steel tops.   I'm currently building the inside of my new shop and I am fully insulating it and then adding a mini-split heatpump to avoid rust problems.



Been there, done that.   Never got caught [/b]
Retired and not doing much anymore and still not getting caught

tule peak timber

persistence personified - never let up , never let down

Kbeitz

I keep my woodwork shop in my unheated old farm barn.
I use this on the parts I don't want to rust like my table
saw top. Works great and makes the board slide so much
better.



 
Collector and builder of many things.
Love machine shop work
and Wood work shop work
And now a saw mill work

YellowHammer

Planers are very good any taking out some surface defects like cup and erratic high spots but doesn't take out gradual defects like long, subtle bow in a board and long twist.  I've tried many times and many tricks to try to fix these issues with a planer, with little success.  Planers are best as thicknessers.

A jointer or facer on the other hand excels at this with its very long bed, and with the cutters in the bed.  The ability to regulate and position down pressure also helps.

You are right, my workshop is a pole barn, and rust can be an issue in the Spring, but not usually in the other times of year.  Spring is a problem when the nights are cold, the iron gets cold, and then in the morning the day warms up and the humidity condenses on the cold metal.  Instant rust.  The solution is simple, light bulbs.  In the Spring, I take standard automotive trouble lights, with 100W bulbs and hang them on the machines.  They gently warm the metal, so no condensation can form.  Easy fix.
   
YellowHammerisms:

Take steps to save steps.

If it won't roll, its not a log; it's still a tree.  Sawmills cut logs, not trees.

Kiln drying wood: When the cookies are burned, they're burned, and you can't fix them.

Sawing is fun for the first couple million boards.

Be smarter than the sawdust

Peter Drouin

So YH now your home all the time you let customers come during the week not just Saturdays?
A&P saw Mill LLC.
45' of Wood Mizer, cutting since 1987.
License NH softwood grader.

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