Hand held electric planer advice

[Sideways]

I wonder how you would get on with a metabo LF724 powered paint remover. It's designed to take an adjustable cut from to 0 to maximum 0.3mm. It is insanely powerful, therefore fast. Of course you have to keep it flat or it can also gouge, but not as much as a power plane or router.

You'd have to start with the flat rear of the tool on your wood and pull the cutter block in from edge towards the centre.

 

[pe2dave]

I've found I can take a sliver off with the electric plane (reduced to '0' marking). I wish I'd seen that video above though!
Perhaps try it (if you have one / can borrow one) on scrap and see how you get on? If buying, research for minimum shaving size first to get your accuracy. Good luck.

 

[AES]

Well, I don't know much at all about electric planers, but I thought the video was excellent - both informative and "entertaining". AND NO music throughout (great!), AND none of the "typically American gabbling, or "What's up guys??", and all that other "over-pressured" and patently false bon homie, etc, etc. In short the bloke is great IMO, and although not hard in my case, I learnt a lot.

 

[Sideways]

Well worth a watch, my old mate Lou, judge for yourself.

Great video.
I love the way he applies all the good practice from setting up a full size planer to the portable tool.

It also shows that a power tool can be tuned up to suit your own individual needs just like a non powered tool can be.
This is especially true where he is taking the corners of the blades and blade carriers. They are made oversize because the normal power plane is a rebate plane. The blades are intended to be a little wider than the sole just like they are in any rebate plane. Definitely too big in most power planes but they are not meant to be a precision tool. The mod in the video is a great improvement to suit his style of use. He's given up the ability to rebate because of the way he's altered the blades, but he's made the tool better for his purposes.

 

[the great waldo]

I've built around 60 instruments with hand tools, so I've worked through everything posted since I last commented.

1. Of course I know how to use a cap iron. But hogging off 2.5mm that way takes forever! The cap iron limits the shaving thickness. Planing cross grain allows much thicker shavings with minimal tearout.

2. A scrub is quick, but I have two issues. First is holding the work - I need to scrub at different angles, which means a lot of time repositioning. Second, heavy tearout, especially on figured wood. I can't risk scrubbing down to even 3mm if I might get tearout deeper than 1 mm. So I can scrub from, say, 5mm to 3.5 mm, but after that it's slow going.

I'm looking for something to reduce the grunt work. The proper tool is a drum sander, but I haven't the space and making 2 or 3 a year doesn't justify the cost.

So far my options seem to be belt sander (40 grit belt should make dust pretty fast) or a decent hand electric planer used with great caution.

The final 1mm or so is removed using hand planes with a close set cap iron and/or card scraper, with lots of pausing to flex and assess the plate. I'm not trying to achieve a consistent thickness, because each square cm of the plate needs individual attention.

It's the first 2.5 mm which I'd like to remove with least effort.

I'm a retired (or at least trying to be) guitar maker. Number 1 tool which I came across was a drum sander. I got one of these relativley late in my career but it was a game changer. Number 2 would a planer thicknesser with a spiral head, these things don't care about gain direction birdseye flamed quilted knotty, you name it'll plane it. I just recently got a makita electric hand planer and updated it with a spiral head from Aliexpress and am waiting for some radiused inserts to replace the square ones supplied ( i'll get back on this soon) Number 3 is a hand plane with a sharp plane iron (japanese are good) to hog off wood and finsih up either with a belt sander or a good (sandvik cabinet scraper) cross planing helps with tearout. When I started 50 years ago it was a stanley No4 and cabinet scraper it takes a while and cross grain was always a pig to plane. If you get a drum sander you'll find you'll want to make more guitars per year as the tedium of planing thin sides will be history. If you can find someone near you that would let you use their drum sander, that would be a nice solution. Good luck.
cheers
Andrew

 

[PhilipL]

I looked up price of Ryobi electric planer discussed in that video just for interest and see that it's no longer available. Only 18v ones.

 

[pe2dave]

@profchris ffx has a 10% offer ending tonight. Code MAKTEN25

 

[profchris]

Thanks everyone - lots of food for thought. I'm first going to try my belt sander with a very coarse grit. I know I can control that, as I've done it before, and I've since worked out improved methods of work holding. A 2.5mm thick workpiece is challenging, I can feel it want to buckle even under a sharp hand plane. Feels like a recipe for tearout, even with the best-behaved planer!

I've just hand resawn back, top and sides for a ukulele, and have enough to replace any I destroy. So that will give me my test pieces. The belt sander is on loan for a few days, but I'll report back in due course.

 

[baldkev]

I'll just throw this out there..... on sampson boat co one of the guys made a router sled and a carrier for an electric planer. It was fully adjustable. Maybe episode 15 to 20 kinda range? They were doing the frames with it.

I wonder how you would get on with a metabo LF724 powered paint remover. It's designed to take an adjustable cut from to 0 to maximum 0.3mm. It is insanely powerful, therefore fast. Of course you have to keep it flat or it can also gouge, but not as much as a power plane or router.
View attachment 142274
You'd have to start with the flat rear of the tool on your wood and pull the cutter block in from edge towards the centre.

I havent even seen that before!!

I'm a retired (or at least trying to be) guitar maker. Number 1 tool which I came across was a drum sander. I got one of these relativley late in my career but it was a game changer. Number 2 would a planer thicknesser with a spiral head, these things don't care about gain direction birdseye flamed quilted knotty, you name it'll plane it. I just recently got a makita electric hand planer and updated it with a spiral head from Aliexpress and am waiting for some radiused inserts to replace the square ones supplied ( i'll get back on this soon) Number 3 is a hand plane with a sharp plane iron (japanese are good) to hog off wood and finsih up either with a belt sander or a good (sandvik cabinet scraper) cross planing helps with tearout. When I started 50 years ago it was a stanley No4 and cabinet scraper it takes a while and cross grain was always a pig to plane. If you get a drum sander you'll find you'll want to make more guitars per year as the tedium of planing thin sides will be history. If you can find someone near you that would let you use their drum sander, that would be a nice solution. Good luck.
cheers
Andrew

Im interested to know how this spiral block is?? Ive got an older makita corded planer and an 18v one. Is the block much heavier? Im wondering if the 18v would struggle to spin it?
And how much did it cost?

Thanks, kev

 

[Inspector]

Here you go Kev. Search - Makita spiral cutterhead They will make them if they haven't before. The site has a page with all the dimensions they need that you give them. Costs the same as the ones they have made in the past.

Pete

 

[baldkev]

Thats a fair bit $193, they list 18v makita..... i guess thats plus shipping and we might get hit with import tax?
The other thing is how good they are. Some stuff that comes out of china is made of chineeesium, which isnt good..... like my new hydraulic dumper. Which broke down 3 times in less than 30 hours use. Its fixed now.... and up for sale!!!
So if you happen to have a ride on tracked dumper at 1 to 1.5 ton, im interested

 

[the great waldo]

82.0US $ |Livter Spiral Cutterhead For Bosch 82mm Makita 110mm For Proxxon Ah80 Portable Electric Planer With Replacable Inserts - Woodworking Machinery Parts - AliExpress
It seems to have gone up a bit in price since I bought it a few weeks ago and I did buy a couple of new bearings €10 although the old ones came off with a bit of heat and cold spray. The cutter block came with square inserts which worked ok but I thought I would order some radiused ones to se if they were better. I'll update when i've tried them. The block is ali with a steel core so I wouldn't imagine it would be a problem for a cordless planer.
Cheers
Andrew

 

[the great waldo]

Thanks everyone - lots of food for thought. I'm first going to try my belt sander with a very coarse grit. I know I can control that, as I've done it before, and I've since worked out improved methods of work holding. A 2.5mm thick workpiece is challenging, I can feel it want to buckle even under a sharp hand plane. Feels like a recipe for tearout, even with the best-behaved planer!

I've just hand resawn back, top and sides for a ukulele, and have enough to replace any I destroy. So that will give me my test pieces. The belt sander is on loan for a few days, but I'll report back in due course.

Your wood should not buckle unless you've clamped the front. Clamp the wood behind the plane. Try a low angle block plane well sharpened, it might help. Double sided tape and the belt sander will work if you stick it to a piece of laminated chipboard /mdf glass or anything flat and hard.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Inspector]

You could look into a vacuum pump and make a vacuum table sized for your needs. It will suck the wood flat and hold it while you use your favourite stock removal method. Vacuum tables are used extensively in CNC machining to hold metal against the forces of some very big cutters. One upside to them over double sided tape is that you won't breakout pieces the thin wood when you pull the tape off. You can also get use out of the vacuum pump and a vacuum bag for gluing although it would be of limited use with musical instruments.

Pete

 

[the great waldo]

Most of the big acoustic guitar making companies use vacuum bags for gluing down the struts and bridges ! I'm always a bit hesitant with vacuums that if you lose the vacuum the part goes flying off!
cheers
Andrew