Getting closer to buying a real planer

[Brad_bb]

I'm looking at this one:
209HH 20" 230V 1 PH 5HP.  Byrd Shelix head


 
I'd like to keep all the same cutters if I can for convenience, Hence the Byrd Shelix head.  I only have single phase in my new shop so I figured I'd stick with that.  

Anyone have any opinions or experience with this one?  Will it run continuous and have enough power?  We'd always like more,  but...  is 5 enough?  If I'm making some flooring stock, I want it to keep up.  

[btulloh]

That's the 24", right?

5 hp will be ok, just can't take a big bite. 

I've got that same planer only 15" with 3hp. It does ok, but if I was doing production work I'd need more hp. Those byrd heads eat up some power.  

It's been a great planer all in all. 

[Tin Horse]

Just bought that same planer a few months ago. I had sold a 3hp General International 15" carbide. It produced a great finish but couldn't sustain long periods of work. Also found out they are out of business.
I spent a long time researching and pricing. There are other 20" units out there cheaper with little or no dealer support.
The Powermatic has support and warranty. I even was able to speak with tech support in the US. with questions. Since getting it I've done only 12" white pine and some red oak. It has run up to 4 hours steady. Night and day difference between the General. Great finish on knotty pine and no belt or motor heating. The quality is better than the few other options available in my area.
Like everything else these days they are built off shore but the US quality and support is still there. 

[doc henderson]

that looks almost identical to a grizzly;  I have a 5hp 20 inch, straight knives.  works well;  I think straight knives are better at taking bigger bites and the spiral cutter heads are better for shallow cuts, but a great finish.  some planers have an easy adjustment for the lower table roller.  for thick irregular wood you need the rollers set higher than for a final planning,  idealy a knifed planer with the rollers set high for stuff off the mill, and a spiral cutter for the thin final cuts.  mine is hard to set, so set low, but with wavy boards sometimes the wave hits on the table.  new the planer at grizzly is about 1600 buck last I checked, but some stuff when up after the tariffs.  mine runs at 16 or 20 feet per minute.  I have had it for 25 years.

[busenitzcww]

I had the G1033X planer which is basically the same planer I abelieve just a different color. Was a great planer for figured/burly grain. I kept on overheating and tripping it. If it was 5hp just for the head it might work better but it runs the feed too. I got fed up with it as I was just running too much lumber through it and ended up going with an Oliver 299. 
Good planer but I wouldn't consider it a heavy duty workhorse.

[btulloh]

Right, 20" not 24".

Sometimes I think I'm losing it. Other times, I'm sure of it.

[doc henderson]

the spiral head version is $2,750.  my old planer I paid 1600 years ago, and it remained the same until the tariffs.  now $1,900.  tried to post a pic but copy and paste did not work, so go to grizzly and see it for yourself.  I have had good support from Grizzly.  poss. all made in the same factory, or at least same design.

[doc henderson]

a more expensive version has a lever that allows adjustment of the table rollers for different uses.  i.e. right off the mill vs fine finish planning. the older version requires a dial indicator, and allen wrench for the set screw and a cam that raises and lowers the roller x 4.  a 20 minute procedure.  I have heard good things about Powermatic, but look for yourself to see if it is better than the grizzly version, or just a different color.  good luck.

[Brad_bb]

My reason for the Powermatic over Grizzly is that PM uses Byrd Shelix cutters.  I already have one small planer that uses those cutters.  When I get a jointer I want to use those cutters, if I switch my beam planer over to those cutters....

For thicker stuff and wider stuff, I have my Woodmizer MP100 beam planer.  I'm also going to be using that as my platform to build my slab flattening mill.  It will be able to plane 5-6ft. wide. 

This planer is for boards.  8/4, 5/4,4/4 etc.  

My thinking is that I'll have a jointer to joint boards first. then run them through the planer.  Some boards, like flooring boards, that are not wavy, might be able to just go through the planer without jointing? I have at least half a dozen stickered pallets of walnut, and at least as much if not more ash.  They are all air dried to 12% now, but of course I'll kiln dry them down to 6-8 before any machine work.

Am I thinking the right way?  

[doc henderson]

yes I think you always think correct.  used to be they offered the byrd and I considered changing/converting to a spiral on my 20 inch.  planer.  I think it was offered by grizzly.  I am not sure in the difference in brands so please keep us informed as you become informed more.

[Southside]

Take a look at the Woodmasters, I have been very, very, happy with the two I have.  Went that route when Grizzly kept delaying me then raised the price, should have gone that way in the beginning.  

[YellowHammer]

I've had a Grizzly four post and a have a Powermatic semi commercial.  
The Grizzly was a good machine, not great, but good, and I planed a LOT of wood through it.  The Grizzly suffered from a few issues, including a continuously loosening main drive pulley, average snipe, and being slightly underpowered.  The quality of the Grizzly was OK, the bed was kind of flat, the outfeed had to be shimmed to match and it didn't have adjustable bed rollers, which is one reason it sniped. Bed rollers are used in roughing wood, but not for finish cuts, they should be dropped so the board rides on the cast iron tables which gives a flatter board.  It also didn't have a good pressure bar, which is another reason it sniped, as the pressure bar is the most important part of the planer, and causes 90% of planing problems.  The grizzly uses their brand of spiral inserts, and they do not last as long as the true Byrd inserts used in Powermatics.

The Powermatic, in the other hand, is assembled and built in Tennessee, has an five year exceptional warranty, and has been taken to the next level of fit and finish.  

Most all the machines are basically copies, but the Powermatics get more TLC when assembled.  So the fit and finish is better.

I sold the Grizzly after I ran enough wood to start grooving the bed, and it sold quick and at a good price.  

Both brands will plane a lot of wood, both will do the job, but the Powermatic is one step up from Grizzly, with a better fit and finish, better assembly, stronger motor for the same advertised hp rating, slightly better Byrd carbides and 5X the warranty.  

[stanmillnc]

I purchased a Northstate 24" spiral cutterhead planer from Leneave Supply. Very happy with this machine - it's my fourth planer (I keep needing wider and upgrading) and by far this one has performed the best. I've had Grizzly before and it was okay, but the Northstate unit is heavier duty and superior quality. Had to special order this machine to be single phase, as I don't have access to three phase power. Cost ~ $6500, built in Taiwan. The guys at Leneave Supply are located in Charlotte, NC but they regularly ship woodworking equipment all over.

[Brad_bb]

@doc henderson @YellowHammer 
Based on your comments I'm reviewing the manual.  The bed rollers can be adjusted between .003 and .006 above the bed.  So that tells me that they are always above the bed.  The adjustment is with a set screw and wrench to rotate the eccentric shaft they are on with gauge or indicator on top to see the height.  


 
Do I need one that is easier to adjust this?  I have no experience with bed rollers.  Will I ever need to adjust this?  How will this affect my two situations: 1)planing a board that has been jointed on one side already, and Planing a rough sawn KD board that looks pretty straight without waves?

Additionally, what does a pressure bar do?  and a chip breaker?


 

Lastly, the manual states that the max depth of cut is 1/8", which is fine, but if I'm running Walnut, Ash or Oak through, can this 5HP 1ph 230V actually chew that much continuously without a problem?  Don't laugh, but my only planer now is a Dewalt 735 and the built in circuit breaker nuisance trips and get shorter between trips until you have to replace it.  I've replaced it once or twice already and I just bought another one to replace today.  Bad design in my opinion.  I know it wasn't meant to be a continuous duty planer, but the amount it will plane before nuisance tripping is way too low in my opinion.

[YellowHammer]

Bed rollers are almost necessary for planing rough sawn wood.  If they are not up, then the unplaned rough downward face will catch the smooth bed and hang, or cause undue parasitic drag and rob hp when you need it most, on a high spot on rough sawn lumber.  So when raised, they make planing rough sawn wood much easier and allow deeper cuts.  

However, bed rollers should be dropped into the bed when finish planing so that the smooth face of the board will be fully supported by the cast iron and smooth bed.  Why pay for a nice flat cast iron planer bed if the board never actually touches it because its always riding on the bed rollers?  A fixed position bed roller planer is a compromise, but can't be quickly optimized to do either.

The better planers have a lever that adjusts the bed rollers easily, on the fly, to account for such issues.  So skip planing is done with the bed rollers up, finish planing his done with the bed rollers down.  

As an example, at couple years back I was a guys place where an inexperienced operator was doing a demo on a very nice SCMI commercial planer.  He had been feeding in rough sawn stock and had the bed rollers up, as they should have been for rough sawn wood, but when he fed some already planed finished stock into it, there was some pretty good entry and exit snipe.  Onlookers were less than impressed.  So I went over, while the machine was feeding, grabbed the bed roller lever and and dropped the bed rollers into the bed and the following boards came out mirror flat.    Entry snipe is generally a sign of too high an infeed bed roller.

Exit snipe, on the other hand, can be caused by bed rollers, but is generally caused by an incorrect pressure bar adjustment.  So looking at your diagram, as the board feeds out of the planer, the tail end of the board will exit the infeed down pressure roller.  At that point, if the pressure bar didn't exist, or is adjusted too high, the tail end of the board would only be supported by the bed and the exit pressure roller and would would tip upward into the cutter head, causing exit snipe.  With a properly adjusted pressure bar, the tail end of the board is supported by the bottom edge of the pressure bar until the board exits the planer.  So for almost the full travel of the board through the planer, the board never touches the pressure bar, only when the board exits the infeed down pressure roller will it lever up and be supported by the pressure bar.  So it follows that if the pressure bar is adjusted 1/16" higher than the board face when it is fully supported front and back, as soon the tail end of the board leaves the support of the front down pressure roller, it will rise into the cutterhead 1/16" until the pressure bar catches it and supports it down.  The jacking up of the board will cause 1/16" exit snipe.  So the pressure bar should be adjusted as close to the surface of the fully supported board as possible, but not touch it to cause parasitic hp loss.  We are talking adjustments to the thickness of a coat of paint, because that's typically when it first needs to be adjusted, assuming it was adjusted correctly at the factory, because after a few boards the paint will rub off on the bottom flange of the pressure bar and the extra clearance will cause snipe.  

If you have to support a board exiting the planer with your hands, i.e. lift up on the board to control or eliminate snipe, it means the pressure bar isn't doing its job, or the pressure bar springs are set too soft.  Or the planer doesn't even have one.

All this assumes the outfeed roller is metal, so if it is rubber or poly, like a lot of the smaller planers, when the board exits the planer, the roller will flex, and the board will become unsupported and cause snipe.

The chip breaker does just that, but it also serves as a pressure bar when a board is being fed into a planer.  It keeps a board from being jammed right into the cutter head.

In my experience, Byrd and carbide insert cutters can only take 3/16" cut per pass due to the way they are mounted to the head and how much clearance they have.  So they can take 1/8" per pass, no problem, as long as there is enough horsepower.  Most planers don't have the hp to cut max advertised depth and width at the same time.  Yes a Shelix will take 1/8" per pass no problem.  Thats generally where I set my planer.  Yes, a 20 inch planer will feed a 20 inch board.  But...no, a 5 hp planer will not take off 1/8" of white oak on a 20" wide board.  It may take 1/8" on a piece if basswood or cedar 20 inches wide, or it may 1/16" on a 20 inch red oak board, but as in all things, HP is king.

So that is also where having a planer with a variable feed rate is important, you can slow the feed rate down and easily plane wide boards, or speed up and take wide finish cuts faster.

Another thing to look for are what's called segmented infeed systems.  These are designed to take boards of slightly different thicknesses and feed them all in at the same time, because the infeed roller isn't just a solid bar that will only grab the highest board, it is segmented into sections, generally about 2 inches wide, each section being spring loaded, and will grab all the boards, much like the suspension in a 4WD vehicle.  It will enable the routine feeding of multiple boards at once, basically multiplying the planer's throughput.  Say the you had a bunch or 4 inch wide rough sawn boards, all maybe maybe 1/16" or even 1/8" different thickness because the sawmill was cutting some slight waves.  A solid infeed planer could only feed one board at a time, so there is 16" of wasted capacity in a 20" planer, sequentially feeding 4 inch boards, head to tail.  If the planer has a segmented cutterhead, multiple boards could the fed at the same time, up the capacity of the throat and horsepower, and could, for example, easily feed 4 boards at once, for 4 times the production.  

A 5 hp planer will take 1/8" off an 8 inch wide walnut or red oak board until you get tired of feeding them or the cutters get dull. Year after year.  

About 7.5 hp is about the biggest 220/240 volt motor that is still single phase.

Never stack the ends of wood to be planed on concrete, or any other surface, for that matter.  The corners and edges of the boards will pick up dirt, grit and crud from the floor and will dull the carbide inserts much quicker that if the boards are stacked on carts or dollies.  We increased the service live of our carbides maybe 25% by doing that simple thing.    

Here is an example of us planing rough sawn cedar, a couple boards at a time a few years ago.  We could never do this on a non segmented cutter head.  Notice how we use the carts.  

hoibby hardwood planing cedar - Yahoo Search Results Video Search Results

[Brad_bb]

Thank you YH! 
So the 201HH appears to have all the features you note - segmented infeed, bed rollers adjustable with lever, 7.5 HP.


 

$7830 on Amazon right now.

[tule peak timber]

Thank you YH!
So the 201HH appears to have all the features you note - segmented infeed, bed rollers adjustable with lever, 7.5 HP.


 

$7830 on Amazon right now.

Brad, we have used this planer and a Northfield for 13 years . Not a bad unit.Pretty well built.

[alan gage]

Tough call. It's always hard to balance what's the best, what best fits your needs, and what best fits your budget.

I can see where in a production environment many of the features mentioned by Yellowhammer would be essential. If you've got more time on your hands or aren't using it hard on a regular basis you can probably get by with a little less. Always hard to say.

I was in a similar situation and wasn't sure which way to jump when, amazingly, a Woodmaster 718 came up on a local auction. I got it for a good price and upgraded it to the spiral head. It's not perfect and probably not what I would have chosen if I had my choice of new planers but the price was right and now that I have it I find I'm able to work around it's limitations and also take advantage of some of its features not offered by other planers, like the ability to turn it into a multi-rip saw which came in very handy when cutting out random width flooring. I had three blades set at different widths and as I was feeding the wider stock through could choose on the fly which blade(s) to run it through to maximize material. I could run two boards through at once and I can't imagine how much time this saved over using the table saw.

I've run in continuously for a few hours straight and motor does get hot. I don't know if it's too hot or not but it's never shut down. I know when ordering new they do offer different grades of motors. It snipes pretty bad unless I lift the end of the board on the way in and out. Because it has the ability to add saw blades there's more distance between the feed rollers and planer head and I don't believe they use a chip breaker or pressure bar for the same reason (blade clearance). Again, not ideal but you work around it.  I make it a point not to cut stock to length until after it's been run through the planer. If I was selling lumber this would not be acceptable. But since I'm generally the end user I can make it work. When the new shop is done and it has a permanent home I'll try rigging up extended in/out feed tables to hopefully help with this.

I'd like to have a wider planer with a faster feed rate, and maybe I will someday, but for now the Woodmaster is meeting my needs.

Not necessarily suggesting you get a Woodmaster and I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know; just commiserating a bit.

Alan

[doc henderson]

@Brad_bb I think it is a tough call unless you have unlimited money to spend.  i bought my grizzly in 1994 and thought i was a big dog.  Unknown numbers of board feet run through, and it has served me well.  ideal might be a HSS 4 knife planer set up for off the mill and a spiral one for finish planing.  i leave my bed roller set the same.  I think 0.002 inches.  i occasionally have a wave the hits the bed.  i can plane fairly irregular boards ok.  If things are straight or jointed on one side so they have a flat surface, it should be fine.  i think the range specified is recommended but I can set mine lower than the table.  Mine are just like the diagram.  i have replaced them once when I had trouble maintaining the specified height.  A few years back, grizzly sold the byrd cutter head to upgrade the planer I have, and for about the price difference had I bought a new one, compared to the old price.  I would get the best planer that makes sense for what you are trying to do.  Most of us do not have the funding or the room for 2 separate planers.  the adjustable bed roller would be nice for double duty, but cost more.  i can finish plane most things, but have trouble with very thin wood for my engraving hobby, and that would be better for sure, flat on the bed.  your walnut may be better to plane with a little moisture instead of very dry so it is smoother. @GeneWengert-WoodDoc . the spiral head will be better for not chipping out and giving a smooth surface out of the planer.  I never considered a different planer, until i started pumping wood from the mill through it.  i have a sharpener for the HSS knives.  i have only pulled the motor down once, and it was a piece that got thicker as it went in.

[Don P]

I smoked the ~3hp motor on my 15" this summer, very hot day, very dull knives, we were planning wood I had air dried in a windy hay barn and it was very dirty, we were changing knives 2x per day but working them too long. I put a 5 on it and it made quite a bit of difference. If you cannot keep your hand on a motor it is too hot.

 I've found if the billy rolls aren't easily adjustable I don't adjust them. Mine are set moderately low and I make do. I'm not making furniture so that works ok but I've used better machines and miss that. This evening I changed knives, I had just run a few thousand feet of white pine and didn't clean the crap off the rollers, ran a few pieces of construction sheathing through and although the cut was good the lumpy rollers made a wavy cut. If the rolls could have been quickly dropped below the bed I would have done that. Good enough for what it was but I do like the rolls on a handle.

Most of my wood is for construction, I use 4 roller tables, in, out and 2 along the far side for stack and return, I plane solo most of the time so that lets me stuff, tail and bring the stack back around. With 2 men on a slab a couple of carts works better.

My pet peeve with this and many machines nowadays is the metric jack screw threads. On a US machine the thread count works with the way we measure, when they are metric it makes height adjustment harder, just requires calipers and learning some points on the machine but a nuisance none the less.

[Brad_bb]

So, why would you plane air dried lumber?  If it's for furniture or anything inside, it will then shrink more and could move?

If the wood were going to be used outside or in outside humidity, it would be fine.  But in most modern homes and any conditioned space, it would shrink.

I could see skip planing air dried lumber so the customer could see it.  But is it typical to sell air dried lumber or do most customers want kiln dried down to 6-8%?  I would think the latter.

Along the next 12 months, I'll be outfitting and finally moving into my new shop.  Hopefully it will be my shop til I die.  Since I got into woodworking in 2006, I've never owned a drill press, a jointer, a bandsaw, a drum or belt sander, and the only planer I've owned is  a Dewalt 735 since about 2013.  I've held back on equipment because I knew I'd be moving shops and I wanted to wait so I didn't have to move equipment and could plan the layout and research machines etc.  I just bought a drill press two months ago and it's in the new shop.  I will be getting a sawstop later in 2020.  Now I want to identify the planer and next the jointer.  Bandsaw later.  That's going to be a hard one- to figure out what size to get and make sure it has the table and fences I want etc.

[123maxbars]

I went with the Grizzly spiral 20in this year. Got the extreme duty model with single 5hp motor, works great for my use in the shop. I only plane the wood I work with, I don't offer milling for my customers.
I looked at Powermatic also but in my research I found they are no longer made/assembled in TN. They are also produced over seas now in a factory close to the Grizzly plant.  The old powermatic like @YellowHammer has are built like tanks, the new ones are about the same as Grizzly, minus the cutter heads just painted a different color.

In closing, love mine, would buy it again, no issues, 

[tule peak timber]

Respectfully, tanks are not always better ! The equipment today coming out of Tawain is very good. Keep asking questions.....

 

[123maxbars]

Respectfully, tanks are not always better ! The equipment today coming out of Tawain is very good. Keep asking questions.....

Totally agree, I was not saying the old ones are better, just what I hear from other users, My only experience is with the new ones like mine, no complaints, 
On a side note that planer you are leaning on probably weighs as much as my tractor, 

[Don P]

So, why would you plane air dried lumber?

Oak board and batten siding. We dried it then flattened it to uniform thickness, ripping battens out of any that didn't make it. It makes for a much nicer job.
Over the past few weeks when there's been a free hour or two I've planed framing lumber that has been air dried for a year, it is actually drier than building supply KD19. We then straightlined to nominal width. Even in rough construction I use very little green or sawmill finish lumber, it is generally at least air dried and then planed.

[tule peak timber]

I own a few pieces of "old "iron and would not go that direction again. SCMI, Martin, and Felder cost a fortune for a reason. Taiwan has improved their equipment offerings a great deal in the last ten or so years and it is very good quality with a number of different paint colors and vendors. I would not hesitate to buy from Taiwan.
  My shop is mostly SCMI and we ate a lot of beans and spaghetti while I made payments :D

[YellowHammer]

I've got an SCMI 20 inch jointer, and it is next level.  On the other hand, Oliver, a vey well known brand, also sells their versions of the Powermatic style planer.  

 



Grizzly also sells this planer, which I found out is a copy of a planer Baker used to make several years ago, but don't anymore.  Its a copy of a true old school workhorse planer.


   

[doc henderson]

I have tried to plane very dry wood and the knots tend to fly apart.  Doc Wengert had made reference as well that planed wood has less checking as it dries.  @GeneWengert-WoodDoc  .  I would still dry it more after, if it will be part of a complex glue up or joinery, and poss. even follow with a final planing.  walnut and maple tend to chip out more, esp. with straight knives.  I think the spiral head will do a better job of not chipping as well.

[Dan_Shade]

I have the 20" version of the grizzly model in YellowHammer's post.  I have the spiral cutter head. 

I've had it for a about 10 years now, I've been very happy with it. 

[Dan_Shade]

And yeah, I agree with Don P, on my planer, one turn is about 0.05", or 1/19

[WDH]

  

This is the GO544.  It is the one that I have.  It has two motors.  A 5 hp for the cutterhead and a 2 hp feed motor.  This keeps the full 5hp on the cutterhead.  It is a real workhorse.  That lower handle on the right adjusts the bed rollers. 

[alan gage]

Most of us do not have the funding or the room for 2 separate planers.

A couple months before I got my Woodmaster 718 I found an old Foley Belsaw 12" with 5hp motor for a few hundred dollars about 100 miles away. I briefly thought of selling it after picking up the 718 but decided having two planers would be nice. By changing out a pulley on the Foley I can increase the feed rate so I'll have a faster planer if I need to run a bunch of material and if I want I can set them up side by side, facing different directions, so that the outfeed side of one planer is the infeed side of the other. This would save me from carrying the boards back around to the front of the planer for the second run.

This all sounds good in theory. We'll see how it actually works when the shop is done (this winter). Like Brad I've been researching and accumulating tools in anticipation. That reminds me, time to write another check for one more month of storage unit rent, hopefully the last.

Alan

[Brad_bb]

That G0544 is worth considering.  It checks the feature boxes of 1) adjustable bed rollers 2) segmented infeed roller.  3) it has a segmented chip breaker and 4)and a pressure bar.  Appears to be a viable option. 

Are there pro's and cons to the separate motors?  Seems like it might be enough power for my needs...

[farmfromkansas]

If you call Grizzly and ask which planer they recommend for commercial use, the one WDH has is the one they recommend.  The cheaper planers are for home use.  I have the 15" with the spiral head, and can not tell any difference from the Byrd head, which I have on my jointer.  Same finish cut, both pull a lot of power.   When I try to plane a lot of boards, my motor overheats and the overload pops and I have to wait to plane any more.  Took off the covers and put a fan on the planer which might help a bit, but it is no commercial planer. The number on mine is a 453px.

[WDH]

I believe that the GO544 is considered a light Industrial planer.  I also have the 3 hp GO453Z 15", and there is no comparison to the GO544 for continuous planing.  There are no cons to the two motors that I have experienced.  I have planed a bit over 100,000 bf through the GO544.  I am on my second set of inserts.  I can get about 20,000 bf before I have to turn the carbide inserts.  This planer is also variable speed, although I usually just run one medium speed as I plane all alone so that I have to work both ends of the planer .  No Ghost employees for me except for myself.  Sometimes I have to give myself a good talking to...

[nativewolf]

I can only say that I encourage the purchase of a helical head.

[Brad_bb]

@WDH I assume you're talking about the feed rate being variable?  Cutter speed would be constant I assume?

[YellowHammer]

Cutterhead would be constant RPM, just the speed of the board would change.

WDH brings up a good point, and that's duty cycle.  There is no comparison to a true continous duty planer.  There is no rattling, coughing, whatever, they just eat wood, all day long, week after week, year after year.  

[Brad_bb]

@YellowHammer , Which WDH is saying the G0544 is continuous duty, correct?

[YellowHammer]

Yes, that particular planer is a Grizz copy of an older style but very effective Baker Sawmill commercial duty continuous planer.  Its sole purpose is to grind wood into chips, for years.  

Having two independent motors is useful so if a board is dragging or otherwise fighting the feed, it isn't robbing power from the cutterhead. 

These types of machines have very beefy parts, and you'll notice, the heavier duty the planer, generally the shorter the infeed and outfeed tables. So it means the pressure bar as well as the frame of the machine itself can hold a big board out like a diving board and eat it.  No auxiliary or roller tables needed, except for the operator to stage boards.

I've not used @WDH  planer, but I saw it when I visited him, and it's a beast.  

A side note, it is possible to stall any planer, I myself have stalled a 50 hp cutterhead on a too deep, too wide board.  That was pretty sporty.  So all planers must still be set judiciously, and you'll know where to set them in their sweet spot.  With these types of machines, if you ever want to upgrade to a larger cutter motor, just put one in.  

A machine like that will probably eat 300 to 400 bdft per hour, both sides (I'm guessing) or 800 bdft per hour single pass, 1/8" deep on oak 8" to 10" wide, and be expected to do it every day, 365 days of the year with a couple people.  Thats a lot of wood.  WDH May have better numbers. 

We used to plane all our wood, maybe 150,000 bdft per year, for several, many, years until we began to outsource most of it.  The planer didn't give in, we did. We still use it "light duty" at about 1 MBF per week.  
 
Don't scrimp on a dust collector.  These things put out a snowblower load of chips, and it takes a decent sized dust collector to keep them clear.  I use a 5 hp Timberking, into a dump hopper.   

[WDH]

 An important aspect you will quickly learn as you plane a big batch of lumber is how consistently the lumber was rough sawn.  I have planed some for others and much of this wood has been poorly sawn, thick and thin, variable thickness, humps and waves etc.  This poorly sawn inconsistent lumber makes the first pass through a challenge as this is when you overload the cutterhead and bog down the planer.  

My lumber is consistent, and Customsawer's lumber is beautifully consistent.  Makes a huge difference in planing efficiency and wear and tear on the machine.  I will rarely plane other people's lumber anymore. 

[Dan_Shade]

I think I was as excited to buy a planer as I was to buy a Sawmill. 

It's a significant purchase to buy one that can handle large volumes of lumber. 

The comment about a dust collector is true too, planers make lots of shavings. 

Buy once, cry once.... 

[petefrom bearswamp]

Interesting thread.
Robert I like your comment about raising then lowering the bed rollers.
I have left mine very low continually.
Mine is a 20" bridgewood spiral head (no longer made but very Taiwanese )which was very wimpy when it came with the 5hp cutterhead motor.
I upgraded to a 10hp 3 phase, but still stalls in a thick wide cut.
Maybe raising my bed rollers a litter higher on the initial pass will help.
Snipe has never been an issue with this machine.
mine is straight spiral, is the byrd helical angled?
Just curious as at my age i am winding down and dont plan to upgrade any of my machinery.
Danny I agree about the thick and thin but then it is all my material so I cant fire the sawyer.

[YellowHammer]

Is the bridgewood similar to the Griz 1033?  

The Byrd heads have a slight spiral, the idea is to shear the wood and have the cutters lead into the wood with less of an impact load, such as seen with straight metal knives.  The problem with that is that with metal knives, there is a certain part of the cutter rotation when there are no knives in the wood, in a momentarily unloaded position, and the electric motor can stay at RPM.  With the Bryrd heads I've had, there is always a cutter in the wood, so there is a constant load in the cutter and on the motor.  That's why spiral heads seem to drag an electric motor down more, they are always in the wood.

The SCMI head is a second generation design and has an extreme twist spiral, so that there are times in the cutterhead rotation where there are no cutters in the wood, giving the electric motor a chance to maintain RPM, like with straight knives.  

The other problem with the Byrds and Grizz carbide heads I've owned is that the shoulder clearance between the edge of the cutter and the main body of the cutter head, the big round hunk of metal the knives are mounted in, is just over 3/16".  So if planing more than that, the board will actually bump into the cutterhead body because of the lack of clearance.  Then the board will feed under, and if the cutter head isn't spring loaded and can't raise up, then extreme loads and and even stalling the motor happens.  For metallic knive the clearance is about 1/4", and if you look closely at some of the specs between the same machine with either spiral or knife configuration, the knives will have a slightly deeper advertised cut.  They simply have more clearance.  

The feed speed plays a tremendous role in stalling and slowing the feed just a little will make a huge difference.

When the carbides gets dull, they really cause a lot more load on the planing.  As a rule of thumb, if the planer is too loud for me to talk nd be heard, then the carbides are dull and slapping the wood, so it's time to rotate them.  

[farmfromkansas]

About rotating your cutters, make sure your cutters are dull and not just dirty.  Wood pitch coats the cutters, and makes them cut like they are dull, and if you clean them, can sometimes cut like new edges.  I use some LA Awesome ammonia cleaner I get at Dollar Tree store, dollar a gallon, and scrub with a toothbrush, then rinse with a little water.  Have to put a piece of cardboard under the cutterhead before starting this, but then after rinsing with a little water, use compressed air to dry the cutterhead, then turn on the machine to get the last of the moisture.

[Brad_bb]

Yes, although I'm planning a dust collection system for the other machines in the shop, for this planer, and my MP100 beam planer, I'm thinking of just using blower motors (dust collection style) to blow the volume of chips outside into my 4x4x8 box.  My only concern with that is planing walnut.  Will fine dust drift towards my horses pen?  That is on the opposite side of the building as the box would be, but the prevailing wind goes in that direction.  The chip box has vent holes around the top perimeter.  I could cover those with filter fabric, but would it be sufficient?  The box is not water proof, so I may need to build a roof on it and paint the sides well. 

[WDH]

I did a 4x4x8 box too, but it was a pain to dump, so I ditched it.  Now there is no box, just a pile that customers come and get and keep the pile pulled down.  Mine are all just dry planer and jointer shavings, though.  Much easier, but I am in the country and am over a 1/4 mile from anything. 

[doc henderson]

@Brad_bb are you worried about respiratory stuff for your horses?  I have heard that walnut is not good on hooves in a stall.  I know cedar can over time cause respiratory stuff in people.  Had not heard about walnut and respiratory stuff with horses.  @Nebraska . It is good you are really thinking about everything!

[WDH]

It is the juglone in the walnut. 

[Nebraska]

I don't know the distance the dust has to travel to get to them. In theory it could bother them if enough got there. It causes laminitis(sore feet/founder). Initally if the walnut is removed the feet get better, not sure how they will fair with repeat exposures may end up wrecking the pony. I need to come up with a dust management  plan at my house as well.  FYI Best wood for horse stalls is cotton wood it's hard and pretty bitter, horses don't eat it when they are bored as much. That's probably  been said here before I'm sure.  

[doc henderson]

nice to have at least two expert opinions.  thanks @Nebraska  &  @WDH  .  @GeneWengert-WoodDoc 

[YellowHammer]

Planer dust is a total mess.  The best way I can describe it is to take a couple spray cans of bright orange marking paint, tape some M80's to their sides, put it where your dust collection pipe exit will be, and blow them up.  That's where the sawdust is going.  

I've tried lots of things to contain the high velocity sawdust coming from the blower exit and the only thing that worked was spinning it out in a open cyclone. Otherwise,  20 yard by 20 yard mess of wind blown sawdust, muddy tracks where I had to get the loader in to scoop and carry it off, and dead and nuked grass where the sawdust acidified the soil and killed everything it landed on.

Here are a couple fails on my part.  


 Here's me trying to get it into a dump  trailer.  A lot of missing.  Notice all the dead grass and dirt from overspray.  I originally tried to use the trailer like a box, but that didn't work, so I opened up the top and that didn't work well either. I tried putting an open canvas bag on the blower end pipe but that still wasn't any good.  



 
So then I tried going directly into a dump truck, that worked ok but still a total mess.

So I finally ended up with an open cyclone and forklift dump hopper and that works the best I have tried, by far.  My overspray has just about disappeared and the grass is growing back.  Easy to dump and maintain.  





By the way, I had as many as 30 cows and three horses and they never seemed to be bothered by the sawdust, you can see one grazing in the background.  However, I never had them penned up where they got full exposure or had to stand in it for any length of time.  They did gave to walk though it occasionally when I fed them in the corral.  Without doubt, wet sawdust outside is a nasty stinking mess and is to be avoided unless you blow it in a pile away away from everything else.  

[doc henderson]

It has become amazing to me how many docs have chickens.  Your volume may exceed the need.  I get smart sacks and when full I ask around and can at least give it away.  

[petefrom bearswamp]

photo of my Bridgewood 20" spiral head

 

[WDH]

My planer and jointer shavings fall into a nice pile.  I don't do sawdust from the mill with the blower.  I still drag off the mill sawdust and spread it out with the box blade on the tractor. 

[Brad_bb]

When you plane, besides the nice planer shavings, there is also a fine dust produced.

[doc henderson]

I do not know anything about respiratory problems and horses.  the heavy chips will fall out, and that can be enhanced by a centrifugal separation. Sounds like your concern is the fine dust that remains suspended and would not have time to be diluted before ending up near the horses.  You also cannot slow the air flow at the end, cause it will slow the entire velocity of the system and you will be clogging things up. sounds like you will need bags or cartages to filter the fine dust.  or put the air exhaust in an area to not affect your ponies.  Maybe a cover to your box, that is like filter fabric, but it will have to be out of the elements.  and the design should be easy to clean. maybe hit it with a stick.  I know there are companies (adds in wood working mags)  that make custom collector bags.  just throwing out ideas.  someone needs to make a machine to compress and bag wood chips.  do you now someone with an old trash truck?  Might be good to estimate your volume and how often you want to empty your bin ect.  best regards Bryan.

[tule peak timber]

To avoid a variety of liability issues I don't allow the dust or shavings to leave here.I push everything into a canyon and compost it all out. Every few years I load some of the compost into the manure spreader and use it for weed abatement.Water here is precious and the compost helps hold soil moisture.

[farmfromkansas]

The local sale barn uses sawdust to put on the floor of their sale ring.  Kind of dusty in the seats there.  There is also a sign in the shack where you pick up your calves, sawdust so much per bag.  Don't know what variety of sawdust it is.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Here is a pic of my chip wagon.
Made from an old manure spreader
I  haul it up to my waste pile when full and shovel it off.
Takes about an hr all told, but I only have to do it once or twice a year.




 

[farmfromkansas]

About this dust collection, a cyclone system needs to be sealed to work correctly if what I read is right, so should you not put a sheet of plywood on top of your bin and connect the cyclone with a hose?  That would surely cut down on the dust problem.  My shop has a cyclone, and I just exhaust the air, no noticeable dust unless I let it overflow my barrel.

[YellowHammer]

Actually, a cyclone can be operated on either the pressure side or the vacuum side.  Most all woodworking cyclones with dust cans work on the suction side and must be sealed to work correctly.  The dust is sucked into the hose, then into the cyclone, and the heavies and most dust is spun out, and then into the motor impellor which operates with the clean air.  That allows a higher effiency impellor because it does not have to deal with trash.

I set my cyclone up in reverse, on the exhaust side so I don't need any kind of sealed container.  The debris gets pulled into the suction pipe, through the impellor, which is heavy duty and designed as a "trash" impeller, then the air and debris shoots out into the cyclone and is spun out the bottom opening.  The mostly clean air must go around a baffle and exits from the top of the cyclone.  So there is not need for a sealed container, the debris simply falls out into an open bin.



 

[busenitzcww]

comment removed

[Brad_bb]

But @YellowHammer , that exhaust air from the cyclone contains fine dust, no?
@busenitzcww that would be a hijack.

[doc henderson]

@Brad_bb yes.  can look at a cartridge or bags.  Oneida and others sell components.  I think they can hep you size it for the flow that you anticipate or pipe the exhaust well away from your animals.  @customsawyer

[Brad_bb]

@doc henderson , I am looking at doing a bag house inside for the regular system.  I just think It will be difficult at best to try to bag house the beam planer and stationary planer.  I think they would quickly overwhelm any system with their volume.  But I will do a consult with like Donaldson Torit, oneida.

[YellowHammer]

Yes, the outflow pipe contains some small amount of fine dust, but for my purposes, it isn't a problem.  I could install a filter or bag on the chimney as the doc suggests and that would work but I'd have to rebalance the airflows.  The key of this system is to get as much of the high velocity air to exit the top stack so it doesn't go out the bottom of the cycle and blow chips out of the bin.  It could be done, but I haven't done it.  

The standard way to use an outside, non bag style, large volume cyclone is as a vacuum system with the use of an "airlock" which is a relatively expensive piece of machinery that sits at the bottom of the cyclone funnel, maintains vacuum, and slowly spins to dump the sawdust into a open bin.  Thats the classical and optimum way to do it, and with the airlock, it will dump directly into an open top bin with no fine sawdust loss.  Its a very nice and elegant solution, and what I was originally going to get from Oneida.  They sell several very nice solutions, of different capabilities and sizes.  The problem with that is the total system is fairly expensive (lots of suction rated metal pipe and fittings, cyclone body, motor, impeller, and airlock, and when I priced it out, it came to about $6K).  I paid $1,000 for the my cyclone body and since I already had the blower, I came way at about 1/6 the cost.  Mine works "almost" as well, but theirs will trap 100% of the sawdust.  If I had the money I would have bought their configuration, but I'm very happy with my system so, I stopped thinking about it.

I have optimized the system airflow pressures to the cyclone to limit fine dust escape, by trial and error, and maybe brought it down to a couple % at most, by weight.  Also, I pipe it out high, like in a chimney, so that any prevailing wind will catch it and disperse whatever comes out.  Its the old edge, "Solution by Dilution."  Most times, I cant even see any fine sawdust, but they will come out some.  With planer shavings, they are so heavy, I don't think I lose much with them.  Its not enough to cover the ground or leave any other significant residue.  The grass is growing where it never used to grow, you can see it on the photos of how the dead grass circle has closed to about the footprint of the bin, so that is good enough for me and my cows.  

I've tried shooting out out into the field in a big pile, it definately works.  However, there is a great big pipe extending out into space, which I had for awhile, but I just didn't like the look of it.  Just me.  Also there is a big pile on the ground, and the cows used to play in it, making it even messier.  I also didn't like having to spend time scooping the sawdust with the loader bucket and carrying it off to dump it.  It rutted up my pasture and made a total mess and killed my grass.  I tried going into a bin, that didn't work to my satisfaction, still very messy, I tried a bunch of things, and this is the first thing that works well for my situation.

It turns out that Oneida had never run their cyclones in reverse.  So I talked with their designers, and they said yeah it it should work, but they wouldn't warrant it because I wasn't using their vacuum configuration with their clean air impellers and they do not sell a trash impeller.  OK, no problem, I got this, just sell me the cyclone body and I'll be happy. :D  

I had already bought a trash impeller blower from Timerking/Woodmaster and knew its capabilities to digest sawdust like a beast.

I hooked it all up and played with it for a little while, (there is an old thread on this) and over time, it works better than I expected.  No airlock, no bags, to fuss, no drama.  When the bin gets full, I put the loader forks into the pockets, and drive off with it, dump it and come back.  My grass is green and I don't have to empty bags.  

[alan gage]

I see over on Sawmill creek there's a guy in Ohio selling a near new 22" Powermatic with helical cutter as well as a nearly new 16" Powermatic jointer with helical cutter. Both are single phase.

I can't remember if we're supposed to post links to things like that or not so I'll let you find it yourself. If you don't see them PM me and I'll send you the links.

Alan

[Larry]

These are real planers.







The first two pictures are a Buss which has a 25 HP main motor and a 15 HP feed motor.  The third picture is a little Newman which only has a 15 HP motor.

They belong to a friend that re-habs and sells old US iron.

I keep thinking about buying the Newman but its still not big enough to do slabs so no real benefit over what I already have.  The other downside is you would need a similar size jointer or run the wood on a sled through the planer.

[teakwood]

Bed rollers are almost necessary for planing rough sawn wood.  If they are not up, then the unplaned rough downward face will catch the smooth bed and hang, or cause undue parasitic drag and rob hp when you need it most, on a high spot on rough sawn lumber.  So when raised, they make planing rough sawn wood much easier and allow deeper cuts.  

However, bed rollers should be dropped into the bed when finish planing so that the smooth face of the board will be fully supported by the cast iron and smooth bed.  Why pay for a nice flat cast iron planer bed if the board never actually touches it because its always riding on the bed rollers?  A fixed position bed roller planer is a compromise, but can't be quickly optimized to do either.

The better planers have a lever that adjusts the bed rollers easily, on the fly, to account for such issues.  So skip planing is done with the bed rollers up, finish planing his done with the bed rollers down.  

As an example, at couple years back I was a guys place where an inexperienced operator was doing a demo on a very nice SCMI commercial planer.  He had been feeding in rough sawn stock and had the bed rollers up, as they should have been for rough sawn wood, but when he fed some already planed finished stock into it, there was some pretty good entry and exit snipe.  Onlookers were less than impressed.  So I went over, while the machine was feeding, grabbed the bed roller lever and and dropped the bed rollers into the bed and the following boards came out mirror flat.    Entry snipe is generally a sign of too high an infeed bed roller.

Exit snipe, on the other hand, can be caused by bed rollers, but is generally caused by an incorrect pressure bar adjustment.  So looking at your diagram, as the board feeds out of the planer, the tail end of the board will exit the infeed down pressure roller.  At that point, if the pressure bar didn't exist, or is adjusted too high, the tail end of the board would only be supported by the bed and the exit pressure roller and would would tip upward into the cutter head, causing exit snipe.  With a properly adjusted pressure bar, the tail end of the board is supported by the bottom edge of the pressure bar until the board exits the planer.  So for almost the full travel of the board through the planer, the board never touches the pressure bar, only when the board exits the infeed down pressure roller will it lever up and be supported by the pressure bar.  So it follows that if the pressure bar is adjusted 1/16" higher than the board face when it is fully supported front and back, as soon the tail end of the board leaves the support of the front down pressure roller, it will rise into the cutterhead 1/16" until the pressure bar catches it and supports it down.  The jacking up of the board will cause 1/16" exit snipe.  So the pressure bar should be adjusted as close to the surface of the fully supported board as possible, but not touch it to cause parasitic hp loss.  We are talking adjustments to the thickness of a coat of paint, because that's typically when it first needs to be adjusted, assuming it was adjusted correctly at the factory, because after a few boards the paint will rub off on the bottom flange of the pressure bar and the extra clearance will cause snipe.  

If you have to support a board exiting the planer with your hands, i.e. lift up on the board to control or eliminate snipe, it means the pressure bar isn't doing its job, or the pressure bar springs are set too soft.  Or the planer doesn't even have one.

All this assumes the outfeed roller is metal, so if it is rubber or poly, like a lot of the smaller planers, when the board exits the planer, the roller will flex, and the board will become unsupported and cause snipe.

The chip breaker does just that, but it also serves as a pressure bar when a board is being fed into a planer.  It keeps a board from being jammed right into the cutter head.

In my experience, Byrd and carbide insert cutters can only take 3/16" cut per pass due to the way they are mounted to the head and how much clearance they have.  So they can take 1/8" per pass, no problem, as long as there is enough horsepower.  Most planers don't have the hp to cut max advertised depth and width at the same time.  Yes a Shelix will take 1/8" per pass no problem.  Thats generally where I set my planer.  Yes, a 20 inch planer will feed a 20 inch board.  But...no, a 5 hp planer will not take off 1/8" of white oak on a 20" wide board.  It may take 1/8" on a piece if basswood or cedar 20 inches wide, or it may 1/16" on a 20 inch red oak board, but as in all things, HP is king.

So that is also where having a planer with a variable feed rate is important, you can slow the feed rate down and easily plane wide boards, or speed up and take wide finish cuts faster.

Another thing to look for are what's called segmented infeed systems.  These are designed to take boards of slightly different thicknesses and feed them all in at the same time, because the infeed roller isn't just a solid bar that will only grab the highest board, it is segmented into sections, generally about 2 inches wide, each section being spring loaded, and will grab all the boards, much like the suspension in a 4WD vehicle.  It will enable the routine feeding of multiple boards at once, basically multiplying the planer's throughput.  Say the you had a bunch or 4 inch wide rough sawn boards, all maybe maybe 1/16" or even 1/8" different thickness because the sawmill was cutting some slight waves.  A solid infeed planer could only feed one board at a time, so there is 16" of wasted capacity in a 20" planer, sequentially feeding 4 inch boards, head to tail.  If the planer has a segmented cutterhead, multiple boards could the fed at the same time, up the capacity of the throat and horsepower, and could, for example, easily feed 4 boards at once, for 4 times the production.  

A 5 hp planer will take 1/8" off an 8 inch wide walnut or red oak board until you get tired of feeding them or the cutters get dull. Year after year.  

About 7.5 hp is about the biggest 220/240 volt motor that is still single phase.

Never stack the ends of wood to be planed on concrete, or any other surface, for that matter.  The corners and edges of the boards will pick up dirt, grit and crud from the floor and will dull the carbide inserts much quicker that if the boards are stacked on carts or dollies.  We increased the service live of our carbides maybe 25% by doing that simple thing.    

Here is an example of us planing rough sawn cedar, a couple boards at a time a few years ago.  We could never do this on a non segmented cutter head.  Notice how we use the carts.  

hoibby hardwood planing cedar - Yahoo Search Results Video Search Results

I thought with at least 800h behind a planer i had vast experience with planing, but wow, did i learn some things from yellowhammers post! that's why i love the FF. thanks 
I have the same 20" planer that has been discussed here on this tread. it's a shop fox, i did upgrade with the grizzly spiral head which is expensive but worth every penny, IMO.
i have put tons of wood thru it and it works fine, but i do have the snipe problem which i will try to attack with the new info from yellowhammer. the planer is ok for furniture making and pro/ hobby use.
but now i'm starting to sell my own teakwood and some customers want them planed (more because teak needs to be worked with carbide tools, HSS won't work) and the planer has come to its limitations, definitely not made for commercial use. i have stalled it and with just 5mm max planing capacity for 6" wide beams, 5hp is just not enough.
would need 24" wide, separated infeed roller and all the other luxuries a real planer has, but it's hard to justify a 6-8k bill for a new planer.