Looking at a 100 ish year old Cresent 26" planer that was line driven. Needs some love but the price seems alright. Anything I should be concerned about or what should I be looking for?
Is it babbit bearing? Is it square head or round head?
Have you paid your health insurance deductible in full for the year yet?
I would guess Babbitt and square. But not 100%.
Does a planer of that type come with a health risk?
Well, aside from all of the entanglement potential due to all of those un-guarded gears and the belt, square head planers were notorious for throwing material both back at the operator and forward to the outfeed, more than a few 2x4's went through walls from them. Yes one can guard them, but you don't want to be around a square head machine when it's running. It's just old technology, at the time it was amazing, today there are better options IMHO.
It may not have anti-kickback safety features.
Newer planers have safer in feed rollers (segmented), which makes running more than one board at a time safer.
I'm not sure how dangerous the old planers are, but a few searches on square cutter heads will highlight some of the risks.
I received a badly broken arm from a planer like that.(kick-back) I would not want to be in the same room with it. :'(
Sounds like BEWARE
OK, so stay away from square heads. With such a machine, is it worthwhile to convert to a spiral head? Is it doable?
Possible, yes, practical no. Problems with bearings and motor mount engineering, and impossible to get a replacement gear if one should happen to be cracked.
The good thing with hose old planers is that they are comparably easy to repair. Pretty much any part can be repaired or remade using a metal lathe and a metal shaper. Parts that fit together are often designed in such a way that once worn out they can be scraped to fit like new.
Pouring new babbitt bearings and scraping them to fit isn't very difficult. I have done it successfully on my rip saw using scrapers I had forged myself.
However there is one mayor downside and that is SAFETY.
Personally I refuse to have anything to do with square heads. I think this is a reasonable precaution just because i like to live. A new cutterhead is unfortunately a bit costly and making a new set of anti-kickback pawls to retrofit an old machine is rather laborious........ so..... if you wand a safe machine be prepared to spend some significant time and money on modernizing it.
Get it . Rebuild it . Get help from Owwm site . I rebuilt an old square head planer . Designed a anti kickback system for it . These old planers are great for trueing up rough green lumber .
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