Advice needed on secondhand Sedgwick 10" planer/thicknesser

[deema]

You need a set of pullers to remove the pulley, it can take a lot of pressure to get the pulley off. It has the bolt holding it to the spindle. It looks like the flanges of the pulley are against the side of the casting. Without the pulley bolt removed it’s not going anywhere soon.
I would not start hitting the bolt, it can damage the threads as well as possibly causing the casting to crack where the bolts hold it to the lower casting.
Lift the machine back on its feet and feed penetrating oil down the set screw hole that holds the bearing retainer. It acts as a nice well to hold the oil.
When the pulley is off, and penetrating oil has been left over night, then with a soft hammer tap the casting away from the spindle with the two lower bolts holding it to the table removed.

 

[donturner]

Machine is back to being vertical and I have a gear puller on its way, hopefully delivered tomorrow. The pulley retaining bolt is off. I had to stop the spindle from spinning by cutting a length of oak and wedging it between the recess where the blades go and the bottom casting. Worked quite nicely and should work for tightening that bolt by wedging it from the other side:

I took advice from this post and ordered almost the same bearings:

• Rear - 6206-2RS sealed bearing from SKF (rated for 7500 rpm)
• Front - 2204 E-2RS1TN9 from SKF (rated for 8000 rpm)

The only difference being that I ordered the non-C3 variant for the rear bearing (the front was already non-C3). As I understand it, C3 is for high temperature applications and has more clearance between the balls. Both the above bearings are well within the spindle speed of 4000rpm (source is page 6 of the PT255 manual) so there didn't seem to be any benefit in having the additional clearance. I'm no expert here though, so maybe there's a reason why the author of the other post chose a C3 bearing for the rear.

 

[donturner]

I got the spindle off using the bearing puller. It didn't require much force at all, just needed the right tool for the job.

Once the spindle was off it was relatively straightforward to install the new bearings. First, I installed them onto the spindle. Then I pushed the spindle, with bearings attached, into the side casings using 2 sash clamps by tightening them at the same time being very careful to keep the bearings straight.

I tapped out the old bushes and installed them using this cheap set of bearing drivers. The bushes required are Plain Oilite Bushes with the following dimensions:

Inner Diameter (ID)	20	20	12
Outer Diameter (OD)	26	25	16
Length	30	15	16
Quantity	1	2	1

I got mine from Bearing-King for £20 delivered.

Sadly the new bushes have not fixed my cog alignment problem. There's still some play in the main cog and the bar (red arrows below).

I've snugged the retaining collar up pretty tight to the bar and it's stopped it rubbing but not sure how long that'll last. I think I need a new main cog shaft so will contact Sedgwick for a price.

I have a question about the thicknesser rollers. They are held in place by blocks which contain bushes. One one side it's a blind bush and on the other a through bush. I've noticed that on my machine the through bushes don't actually go all the way through (see below). This leaves a cavity for sawdust and grime to collect. Do I have the wrong sized bushes installed? If not, what's the point of this cavity?

 

[donturner]

I have a couple of questions. One is general to all planers, and one is specific to this machine which perhaps @deema, @Sideways or someone else with a Sedgwick machine could answer?

#1 Is there a trick to setting the blade height? There are setscrews under the blade which set its height, and I can get the height perfect when the retaining screws aren't tight. However, as soon as I tighten them up the blade height changes. They seem to bend the blade so that it's very slightly lower in the middle.

I'm following the instructions in the manual for testing the height:

After many, many slight adjustments I've got them to an acceptable height but I feel like I'm missing something obvious to make this quicker and more accurate.

#2 The fence doesn't lock in place securely. It can be moved fairly easily by pulling the bottom of the fence towards you. Here's my fence assembly. Is there a missing washer where the red arrow is pointing? On disassembly there are wear marks indicating a washer was once there.

Many thanks in advance.

Update on other issues/renovation. I have...

- replaced the flat belt (cost £70 delivered!) but has completely fixed the wobbly belt issue
- removed as much rust as I can from everything using rust remover from HG chemicals - really amazing stuff
- lubricated moving parts using silicon grease
- waxed the tables
- replaced the broken emergency off switch

Aside from the fence issue above, the machine is working beautifully. Now need to get a better chip extractor, my poor old shop vac is nowhere near up to the task!

 

[worn thumbs]

If it cheers you up,the knife adjustment on the old Danckaert planer I once shared a workshop with was far harder to get right.It needed a long parallel punch and an hour or two to get it spot on.With the Sedgwick it ought to be a case of applying enough torque to the locking bolts to just permit the knife to slide when jacked out by the adjusting screws.They only really work on the way out,but you can lean on the edge with a hardwood block to nudge them back in a touch for a re-run.

The fence is something I found disappointing on the Sedgwick as it works quite nicely when square.Accurately setting a bevel or accurately returning it to square is not as easy as it ought to be.