slab flattening

[tule peak timber]

Over the years I've commented and posted on this subject, mostly from all of the different router jig builds I've evolved to flatten slabs too large to run through a machine. I've also touted the prowess of a large powered hand planer in the hands of a guy who knows what he is doing. So, fast forward to the current job, size and my age. 

I think it might be time to look at a slab surfacer and from what I can see, it boils down to the Woodmizer surfacing machine or a machine I found online called the Jointawood. Two different approaches and I'm wondering if anyone here has any comments/experience with or regarding these two approaches. I'm not going to invest in a full tilt CNC machine for several reasons, so I think it will be one of these two. 

Appreciate any input. It's time for me to start looking at the competition!
Rob

[Hilltop366]

That Jointawood looks pretty slick, I had mentioned the idea of something similar in someones DIY slab flattener thread using parts of a jointer or buying a helical head for one or spindle shaper.

As I was watching the video I was thinking that it would be handy if there was a way to joint the slab as well while it was on the table sitting flat only to look in the "products" section to see that they offer a router/jointer attachment.

[customsawyer]

I have the WM Slabmizer. It does pretty good. I've only used the sanding attachment once and wasn't impressed. Might be because I didn't give it enough time to figure it out. One of the things I did that was on the smart side of the scale, was getting a extra head. I can be changing the knives on one head, while the help is driving the machine. It also lets me have the head up on a table, where it's easier to work on. I learned from Old Greenhorn that it works better if you move the machine front to back by hand. It goes about twice as fast. I still adjust side to side with the joy stick but that is it. I can normally plane both sides of a 40" by 8' slab in less than 30 min. Since I'm not just standing around pushing the joystick, it takes less beer too.

[nopoint]

The jointawood looks pretty cool. Wider cutter head more efficient than the single rotating vertical tool. One of my Amish neighbors built a similar unit with a wider head and a big gas engine mounted. Capital S Scary! Haven't seen it in a while they must have decided to go another route. I would buy a Shopbot or similar CNC router before I spent that kind of money on the Woodmizer machine. If the programing scares you it shouldn't. On the router you can build some canned programs and change a few things and be cutting. If you need multiple passes, set it and walk away. Shopbot has an easy interface and I'm sure many other brands do as well. This isn't the line by line g-code based world of yesteryear. 

[tule peak timber]

I appreciate the feedback. I'm still looking but will pull the trigger in the not too distant future. Right now I'm doing some research on what size I really need, and it might not be the largest model that Jointawood makes. I also need a kiln upgrade and a storefront, not to mention extra covered storage. Does this ever end?  

[Larry]

Two local guys have full time business flattening slabs and cranking out tables. One has been using the Slabmizer for about 6 years and the other has been using the Wood Wizz as sold by Baker for a couple of years. From watching both, the Wood Wizz seems faster but that could also be due to the operator or cutter sharpness. Both guys seem happy.

I'm still using a router bridge but I don't do many.

[Ianab]

That Jointawood does look like a pretty slick machine. The planer head is probably faster than a rotary cutter, if the slab is reasonably flat and you don't have to take multiple passes. A router style cutter takes a narrower pass, but can cut deeper on each pass. 

What's the price like compared to a general purpose CNC machine? From looking at it, it's already got 95% of a basic CNC machine, it's just been programmed for only one function. But if that's the only thing you need it to do, that's fine. Other shops might go with a more general purpose CNC, that could flatten slabs one day, engrave signs the next, and cut out components from sheet goods the day after, depending on what jobs they were working on. 

[tule peak timber]

I saw the wood wizz at a show in Vegas and didn't think too much of it, but that was years ago when it first came out. I told the rep at the show that the machine tied up a worker to run it and wasn't going to save me any time. My error???Fast forward to the newer slab flatteners that have more automated functions, and to me, more attractive. I don't do sheet goods so a real CNC probably is over kill. Price wise the Jointawood will land here between 30-35 K$ so not a small investment, but less than a CNC. My particular style of woodworking is to take a log, make it flat, and make the flat pieces three dimensional again usually from just one flat reference, on the inside. Got to make things flat faster!

[blackhawk]

The jointawood looks pretty cool. Wider cutter head more efficient than the single rotating vertical tool. One of my Amish neighbors built a similar unit with a wider head and a big gas engine mounted. Capital S Scary! Haven't seen it in a while they must have decided to go another route. I would buy a Shopbot or similar CNC router before I spent that kind of money on the Woodmizer machine. If the programing scares you it shouldn't. On the router you can build some canned programs and change a few things and be cutting. If you need multiple passes, set it and walk away. Shopbot has an easy interface and I'm sure many other brands do as well. This isn't the line by line g-code based world of yesteryear.

I agree with nopoint on a used CNC.  I have a Shopbot from 2006.  I have been flattening slabs on it like crazy over the past few months for other people.  I have a canned program that runs right from the Shopbot software.  Put in your length, width, depth of cut and that's it.  I can walk away and do other things while the CNC makes me money.  You can find an older Shopbot with a spindle for $10K or less.

[nopoint]

Tule peak, I looked at your web page. You have some really nice stuff. Some of your work could have been simplified with CNC. Curves, circles, inlays etc... As a Tech Ed Teacher I routinely get high school and occasionally  Middle schoolers running this equipment. Don't be intimidated. Obviously hard from the outside to see the whole picture of your scenario.  I'm not an agent for Shopbot but have set several up at different schools over time and have been very happy with their product and support. The other positive is they have a pretty easy to learn interface that is mostly graphics based. I'm sure other cnc companies are just as good or better I just don't have first hand experience with them. If you want to message me I would be more than happy to discuss this via phone in greater detail if you would like. 

[tule peak timber]

Thanks again to all for the input.
Yes, I will PM you. I always brag to the customers that we are the only kids on the block using stone age tools to produce the volume we do. I also need to think about who might come to work here, their capabilities and frankly, smarter ways of doing things.
Cheers,
Rob

[scsmith42]

Rob, you might also want to check out the surfaces from TruCut mills.  I saw one at the Paul Bunyon show surfacing an 8' wide slab.

https://www.trucutmills.com/surfacers/

[Brad_bb]

Tonight I took a 30" square end grain maple butcher block to someone with a slabmizer.  The height of the block was 11.5" at the corners.  It's well worn from years of cutting meat.  It came from my buddies family neighborhood grocery store that operated from 1922-1976.  He gave me one of the two butcher blocks.  It's worn down in places probably to 10 or so inches.  Well we found out tonight that the max thickness the slabmizer can do is ~8.25".  He said they advertise 9 inches and the scale it to 9", but it was clear that it's max height was only 8.25", so I have to bring the  block home and figure out how I'm going to flatten it.

[Old Greenhorn]

Brad, I haven't tried this but it makes sense to me with the time I have on the slabmizer: How about making a lower stage and placing it between the bunks on the floor. Make the height of the stage so that it places the top surface of your target block in the working range? You may have to move a bunk temporarily and the stage will need some weight/bracing to keep it generally in place, but I can't see why that wouldn't work for a one-off job. 

[Hilltop366]

I'm thinking that a shallow cut around the outer edge to prevent tear out then flatten with the sawmill.

[Hilltop366]

If using a circular saw to make the first cut score with a knife first.

[doc henderson]

yes, I would not hesitate to cut it like a cookie on a band mill.

[moodnacreek]

Because I specialize in rough lumber I have to resaw with the same saw that cut the log. The only way around this is to cut many of these 'slabs' so called, and stack them on a concrete or steel base, sticker all the way to the ends, pile high and weight very heavy. Keep sawing and stacking and after 2 years + and a long dry spell take down the oldest pile and stand them up in a building. Many can be dried flat this way.

[21incher]

I see the difference between  the woodmizer flattner and a cnc router  being mostly if you plan on adding an employee to take full advantage of the cnc router.  A flattner would be easy for you to run without having  to learn to use cad and cam software . A cnc router with an good technician could easily flatten slabs along with adding artistic details to projects like copying pictures of things like hand carvings. Those hand fitted s curve interface slabs could be cut in minutes using pictures  to determine the mating and high accuracy  templates for hand projects would only  take minutes.  The software license and maintenance on a cnc router will also be higher. In idle time you could actually turn scrap materials into accent pieces and lighting fixtures.  Both will do the job, it's the idle time a cnc router has the capability to allow new creativity at a cost.

[tule peak timber]

Tule peak, I looked at your web page. You have some really nice stuff. Some of your work could have been simplified with CNC. Curves, circles, inlays etc... As a Tech Ed Teacher I routinely get high school and occasionally  Middle schoolers running this equipment. Don't be intimidated. Obviously hard from the outside to see the whole picture of your scenario.  I'm not an agent for Shopbot but have set several up at different schools over time and have been very happy with their product and support. The other positive is they have a pretty easy to learn interface that is mostly graphics based. I'm sure other cnc companies are just as good or better I just don't have first hand experience with them. If you want to message me I would be more than happy to discuss this via phone in greater detail if you would like.

Thank you for the lengthy phone call this evening. I never thought I'd be looking at a CNC and now my wife has me blowing out the side of the shop building with crane access and whatever that might entail!
Thanks again for reassuring me that I would not be looking at thousands of pages of 1's and 0's, trying to set something up. I've been out of the game way too long.

[doc henderson]

brand new 5 x 8-foot cnc router.  52 K with vacuum and all the bells and whistles.  retired ortho doc friend with a winery, observatory and too many toys.


he was a carpenter before going to med school, he did ortho so it cannot be too hard.



it was very flat before, now dead flat.  elm 7% MC, for bar counter top.



Roger the pharmacist very happy.

[Ianab]

so I have to bring the  block home and figure out how I'm going to flatten it.

For a one off, a manual router bridge will get the job done. A 24" x 24" block won't take long to do by hand. It's when you want to flatten multiple 12ft x 3 ft table tops, then you look at a dedicated machine or a CNC. My choice would be a planer blade for my swing mill, it's basically still a manual router bridge, but with a 13 hp router and a ~12" fly cutter. Turns my little sawmill into a "slabmiser". Loud and messy, but it makes things flat. 

[longtime lurker]

I'd lean to a CNC machine. There's just so much versatility there, you can not just flatten a slab but you can carve pretty patterns into the slab, or do short run mouldings to match existing, or throw sheet material on it and cut out a kitchen if you wanted to.

I've never driven one, just seen them working. And I'm sure there's a learning curve with programming to do the fancy stuff. But I'm also sure it doesn't have to be us old fossils that learn it... when you have the gear it's not so hard to find the bright young men to drive it. Far easier than finding bright young men to do things the hard way that's for sure, cuz if they're bright enough then they know it's the hard way and they're bright enough to go work for someone with better equipment.

Then again I take a perverse kind of pride in being the  kid that punches out big volumes with stone age tools. I was just reading the other day that there's a resurgence of obsidian scalpels for surgery because it's actually sharper than steel... some stone age tools are still best for the job if you know how to drive them 

[tule peak timber]

I'm going to probe both Shopsaber and Shopbot to see what they have to say. This morning, I at least figured out where it might go in the shop and stay clean and facilitate loading of heavy slabs. There is actually a list of smaller thigs I want to pursue with an additional helper, widgets so to speak.  

[21incher]

The WOC with CNC is going to be an awesome combination.  Can't  wait to see where it leads you .

[doc henderson]

Jim also has a winery and a first-class observatory to do astrophotography.  If we ever do an event here for the forum, a tour and wine tasting would be on the agenda.  We also have an underground salt museum, and the cosmosphere, a world class rocket and science museum.  here are some projects, Jim has start doing on his CNC.  He tried to cut two-part chess boards.  tolerance down to a few thousandths of an inch.  He tossed that for now and cuts alternate depressions and fills with epoxy.  he had a jig to make the aggravation boards with a router.  now if he wants to make it, he has saved the program. 

[tule peak timber]

Still working on getting back a response from a couple of manufacturers but I did figure out where to put the machine from an easy loading point of access. Doc, thanks for the pics! I do very few cabinet jobs and only custom work so my needs don't exactly align with the average CNC buyer. I want to get into the widget business with the tons of walnut scraps generated here and I have a few ideas in that direction. Door panels are another idea let alone stock M&T frame parts. My wife's son wants to work here and being the operator of the machine would be a good match for him.  

[doc henderson]

there is a learning curve and having a primary operator is a good idea.  work ethic and common sense go a long way.  full use of the material you buy with a ROI makes sense if you can do it fast enough (wages) to turn a profit.  as well, working it 6 or 8 hours a day will make more sense than throwing a cover on it, and using it only when needed.  I am sure you can find a few machines close to observe, but if you are in the neighborhood, stop by.

[Larry]

I want to get into the widget business with the tons of walnut scraps generated here and I have a few ideas in that direction.

Somebody wants a table 7' long and all I have is 10' slabs. The off cuts were threatening to take over the shop recently. To small for most of my stuff but I'm to cheap to throw it away.

To use some of it up, I've been making treenware and pushing the theme "From the Tree". Folks like the thought of something made from a tree that came from there own neighborhood. Demand is high, but with me making it on manual machines the price is high and not much profit. Maybe with a cnc.......but than I would have to actually work to pay for the cnc.

Most of the scrap left the shop a couple of weeks ago. I cut it into 6-8" diameter bowl blanks and donated to our woodturning club for teaching youth groups how to turn on a wood lathe. Pay it forward......

[longtime lurker]

I got this little bit repeat customer, has a cabinet&joinery shop but he doesn't do a lot of solid timber hence being a little bit customer.

His shop has an old altendorf table saw, an edgebander and a few other bits and pieces and a whopping great cnc machine. No jointer. No thicknesser. No mortiser or spindle moulder or drum sander or any of the machines of a traditional joinery shop. No need, that big cnc machine in its climate controlled room replaced all that.

Anyway long story short old mates apprentices spend their first two years basicly learning to operate the cnc gear, after that he starts letting them out to do installations etc. So there's a learning curve with this technology and it takes a while to be a skilled professional rathrer than a gifted amateur. But I want one.

I just need a few other things more

[YellowHammer]

So you're talking about doing widgets and stuff, but what size capacity machine are you looking at?  

[tule peak timber]

A 5 x 10 or a 5 x 12 table cut size. I have some ideas on incorporating it production line style into another long table all referenced together with rollers.
I've been reading since 2AM this morning, mostly on caveats and cautionary tales, hidden costs and what exactly is involved in entering the CNC game. For all these years I have intrinsically known and resisted going anywhere different from techniques I have developed here. There are a great deal of videos out with the pros and cons of a commercial or industrial sized machine, commensurate with prices starting at around $50k and going to well over $1,000,000.
I'm at the first cobblestone on the yellow brick road and I can't even see Oz from here, it's so far down the road. Along with the usual business decisions, I have to look at my supply chains for logs, definition of the market beyond my custom work, the competition and who the heck is going to run the machine and support equipment. Yes, I have written business plans in the past for everything except my own business.

[21incher]

Sounds  to me like baby steps would be a Slabmizer to handle your  current needs. Then possibly a small cnc to develop prototypes. For big runs there are many shops with trained employees and machines that could probably  be competitive with your  costs to make items.  That would leave more Alaska time on your hands  . 

[YellowHammer]

We have lots of customers with CNC and I can offer a few observations, anyway, even though I don't own one, I hear lots of stories, both good and bad. 

We had a local business who bought a cheap machine and it let him down, and so he bought another, and then got so successful and busy with it that he bought a third, which after a short time, went off line, and so he sold them all and got one good one.

On the other side, we have a company that bought a million dollar one many years ago, used it, but it was so complicated and had such proprietary parts that when it went down, it stayed down for a long time.  I think they gave up on it. So don't get one that is so expensive and rare that the company has no support base or even reason to support it.  Software is key, make sure it's modern and well maintained, I've hear horror stories of people who have been let down by poor or glitchy software ruining parts while they are being cut. 

There is one company who used to build internet widgets of all kinds with pieces of scrap and sells the end product for $20 bucks, about a 10X profit margin with a CNC.  I believe he sold out a couple years ago for a huge amount of money.  $20 internet sales for a knife holder, kitchen utensil, wooden spoons, stuff like that doesn't sound like much until you sell a couple thousand per month and then it's nice money.  So a faster machine is better than a slow one. 

We just had a customer leave, they bought some walnut for a table top, and they told me they bought a CNC table kit online minus top, full mortise and tenon, and it fit together perfect.  His words were, "It wasn't cheap but I've already ordered another."

So I would advise don't get one too expensive, or too cheap, but get a common and well known mainstream one that has been around awhile, or at least the company has, and make sure it has good after sales support.

We have another customer who sells custom cutting boards for $300 apiece to a local real estate  company.  When they sell a house, they have him CNC the silhouette of the house and the new owners name into the cutting board and the real estate lady gives it to the new homeowner as a gift.  She could care less how much the cutting board and housewarming present cost when she sells a quarter million or half million dollar house.  The cutting boards a glue ups from scraps. 
 
I've even thought of getting one myself but Martha would kill me.

[teakwood]

I don't have personal experience and this probably doesn't apply to Tule as he has a special market with lots of custom customers. (can i say that?)

In Switzerland, as a woodworking shop if you don't have a CNC your ether very small or not competing. At minimum 5000$/month/employee wages they need a CNC. need to do 10 doors throw then on the machine and 3 minutes later you have every pocket, groove and hole made for all the hardware the door will have installed. A worker would need 30min per door and less accurate. i doesn't matter that the machine costs 1 million plus, it will eventually pay for itself 

[tule peak timber]

Probably going to need more that a SlabMizer. I received my first quote from ShopSabre and they look pretty good from a number of standpoints. ShopSabre and their owners have a ton of informative videos on UTube and I've been spending lots of hours going over them. Realistically for me to be competitive, I need to upgrade my kiln operations, showroom and dry wood storage area. For example, right now I have vast amounts of valuable walnuts and other woods sitting out in the snow this afternoon. That's like wasting $. I've contacting Onsrud and will be getting a quote from them sometime next week. I'm planning a visit to a friend's big cabinet shop to look at his 2 Onsrud machines and get a little education. I've also put out feelers for a concrete guy as I have no place to put another machine in my shop. So, step by step. I think this machine can work for me and who knows what other avenues it might open up.

[longtime lurker]

Yah ain't that always the way of it... you need more kiln... then once you have the kiln space  you need more storage then once you have the kiln and storage you need more mill, and then you need more logs so you need to enlarge the yard and buy a better loader.

Then once you get all that sorted it all runs great for 6 months and then you need more kiln again.

Story of my life.