Are Wood-Mizer planer/moulders straightening boards?

[janisda]

Hello!

I live in Latvia which is in Europe so I am already sorry for my English.

I am interested in buying a 4 sided planer/moulder for producing tongue and groove or shiplap. I like Wood-Mizer production and there is a reseller not far away. And I have been looking trough the internet whole day and I have not found the answer that I am searching for.

Does MP260, MP280 or MP360 straighten the boards? I understand that in typical board after kiln processing to get S4S boards requires jointing firstly if I use separate machines. But as I would like to get tongued and grooved boards in the end product it would be a huge time saver if it was possible to use just one machine for everything. By everything I mean jointing, planing and moulding to get a finished product.

Thanks you!

[beenthere]

Welcome janisda to the Forestry Forum.

To produce a final product in one pass, often a 5 headed moulder is used. The first head is the jointer head, and the four sides are moulded using this first pass as the base. 

[barbender]

Hello and welcome, janisda!

As far as I understand, those machines don't straighten the boards. If you feed a curved rough board in, a finished, smooth curved board comes out the other end.

[Ljohnsaw]

I've got a MP200 (2-sided) and can say it will NOT straighten boards. I found the best time saver was to run my boards through my table saw (just one side).  I could get most of the crook out and have consistent width that the MP200 then did a very good job.  If there is too much crook, I would make two shorter boards that were closer to straight than try to fix a really bad long one.  My machine will take at most 5mm in thickness and/or width in one pass.  There are hard stop that prevent the boards from entering if you attempt to take a bigger bite.  On a 16' 2x8, a little crook could be corrected during installation.

[scsmith42]

As others have said, they DO NOT straighten boards.  I run a 6 head Wadkin moulder and all of my blanks are pre-sized (straightened) by either a straight line rip saw or a two blade edger.

The edger is the quickest solution because it does both sides at the same time.  

Yes, it's an extra step but mandatory in my opinion.

Best of success to you (and your English is a lot better than my Latvian!)

Scott

[janisda]

Thanks to everyone for your quick responses.

I found the best time saver was to run my boards through my table saw (just one side).  I could get most of the crook out and have consistent width that the MP200 then did a very good job. 

So then if the crook is removed by table saw or edger then bow, cup and twist can be solved by your MP200? Or what do you mean by does a very good job?
Or bow, cup and twist is what is solved in drying process beforehand?

The same question to scsmith42.

I run a 6 head Wadkin moulder and all of my blanks are pre-sized (straightened) by either a straight line rip saw or a two blade edger.

[janisda]

To produce a final product in one pass, often a 5 headed moulder is used. The first head is the jointer head, and the four sides are moulded using this first pass as the base.

Because this makes more sense to me if I think about all deformations. If the base is flat and straight then all three other sides can be moulded after it.

But on the other hand why doesn't 4 headed moulder do that? I see that in Wood-Mizers MP360 for example bottom spindle is the first one as well. 

And isn't the feature that is mentioned in this video - https://youtu.be/cPZMyNXqkq8?si=L3AEzpUkToMRhgoE&t=175 from 2min55s to 3min14s meant for exact thing? To joint the bottom face first?

[Ianab]

Problem is that if you feed a banana into a molding machine or planer, then you get a smoother banana out the other end. There isn't a machine that magically straightens wood. Best you can hope for is that they trim off the edges enough to give you a straight board.  But they can't straighten out a badly warped board.

You need to take care of that in the drying process. Keep the wood flat as it dries, and it will tend to stay that way. At least keep it straight enough that you can machine off the stray bits and still get yout target finished board.

[teakwood]

You can straighten boards on a moulder, mine does, but you need a real moulder with a long infeed table. you're in europe so look for a used weinig machine, nice used machines with tooling sell for 10k, no need to buy a toy woodmizer moulder for 15k (or i don't know how much they cost new)

read this topic entirely, lots to learn about moulders, i was in your shoes once and it was a learning curve. and now 2 years later my 27k total moulder investment has paid for itself already.

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=117186.0

[Magicman]

It's normal to shorten long lumber to remove the effects of the crook:

[scsmith42]

Thanks to everyone for your quick responses.

I found the best time saver was to run my boards through my table saw (just one side).  I could get most of the crook out and have consistent width that the MP200 then did a very good job.

So then if the crook is removed by table saw or edger then bow, cup and twist can be solved by your MP200? Or what do you mean by does a very good job?
Or bow, cup and twist is what is solved in drying process beforehand?

The same question to scsmith42.

I run a 6 head Wadkin moulder and all of my blanks are pre-sized (straightened) by either a straight line rip saw or a two blade edger.

The crook is removed by the edger. A moulder won't remove twist, but will remove minor cupping if your blanks are thick enough.

The big advantage of a 5 head moulder over a 4 head is the second bottom head. Moulders are typically set up to run the material "show face down". The first bottom head hogs off the bulk of the material, and the second one only removes .010-.020 or so but leaves it very smooth.

[Brad_bb]

I asked these same questions a number of years ago.  I decided it would be a significant capitol investment in equipment, shop space, dust collection, and electrical work.  In the end I decided that it was more cost effective for me to have someone else perform this work to my wood.  I've been using a guy who makes flooring. I have taken all my dry boards to him and he uses an over under machine to produce flat boards, then runs them through a straight line rip machine to straighten one edge.  My boards are then ready do use for woodworking(S3S), or if I wanted flooring he could further processed with tongue and groove or rabbets for shiplap.  If you can find someone who can process your dry boards well, and the cost is reasonable, it may be the way to go if you're not very high volume.  It also lets you focus on producing the best product on your end, which will translate to a better further processed product.

If you're milling your own wood, I think it's most important for you to focus on producing quality boards, grade boards, especially if it's for flooring.  This is done via the logs you choose, and how you mill them to get high grade wood.  Stacking the boards correctly, on pallets, with good stickers, aligned well, with weight on the stacks, and placed in the proper conditions for air drying, will make a huge difference in producing flat wood.  This will help when doing proper kiln drying to maintain flat boards.  The flatter dry boards you end up with, the easier it will be to joint/plant them into S3S.  If you haven't watched Yellow hammers videos on youtube (Hobby hardwood alabama) a number of his videos cover this stuff.  Quality wood in will become quality wood output.  Low grade boards can twist and warp, even worse if not properly stacked, weighted, and air dried correctly.  Low grade boards in a stack can cause problems with better boards around it in a stack.