Jointer knives for dirty wood, best choice

[George Petersen]

I have been surfacing(30 year old) air dry walnut gunstock blanks with a Ridgid planer. Definately not the best tool for the job, but has surprised me with its durability. The platen is shot, and the bearings are getting noisy, so the writing is on the wall. It certainly does not owe me anything.
I'm thinking of replacing it with a Grizzly GO490 8" Jointer. I am not concerned with precise square and glass smooth surface, removing oxidized wood, fine dust, rat droppings and other savory substances is the goal.
I do not care to sharpen and set knives, it is too easy to procrastinate (the Ridgid would no doubt have lasted longer if I was on top of the knife situation, they are easy to change, but difficult to find)
SO...my question is- When I get the GO490, should I get the spiral cutter head or go with the dispoz-a-blade setup? Which can take abuse best without being fussed over?
Remember, I am not concerned with precision surfacing, just trying to find the most durable cutting system for dirty lumber .
Thanks in advance, sounds like you guys may be tired of jointer questions.

[Myk Rian]

The disposable solution will be expensive. I'd go with the spiral. Dirt and such is going to eat anything you use, but the indexed cutters will be easier to maintain.

[M Toupin]

If durability is your priority, then I would opt for carbide. The cut won't be quite as good as fresh HSS,but they will outlast the HSS by a long shot. I would not even consider a spiral head for 2 reasons, first only HSS blades are available, and second, the replacement blade cost.

http://www.amanatool.com/knives/ctp100.html

Mike

[George Petersen]

Thanks Myk, how much time is involved rotating all of the spiral inserts to a fresh edge?
I realize you have 4 edges on the spiral inserts, will the insert working edge last longer than the disposable knife before requiring rotation (assuming both doing the same work?) I hope that made sense, I'm not a great writer.
I would not want a system that required a lot of time and effort to renew, it becomes too easy for me to put it off and run dull. I have not been around the spiral head at all, so this is new to me.
The Ridgid planer disposable knives worked nicely, and were quick and easy to change, but getting replacements was a pain, which I won't go into here.

[Joe Jensen]

If this is going to be a high volume, long term thing, then you should consider a sander option. Ideally a wide belt, but a heavy drum sander could work as well. If it's a low volume thing, I'd suggest hitting them with a wire brush in a right angle grinder first to remove the grit. I've used this before when I had some dirty wood that I didn't want in my jointer and planer.

[Myk Rian]

Thanks Myk, how much time is involved rotating all of the spiral inserts to a fresh edge?
If you get a nick in the middle of your cutting head, all you would have to do is turn a couple or few inserts, instead of all of them.

[Peter Quinn]

I suggest a compressor blow gun and a wire brush. Best way to plane rocks (lets face it, its not the dirt that is killing the knives, its the small rocks in the dirt doing the damage) is not to. Neither carbide nor HSS does well against fine rocks ground into old wood. I'd say carbide nicks at least as easily if not easier being more brittle than HSS, and HSS leaves a better finish and is easier and cheaper to regrind. A full set of carbide inserts for a shelix head is WAZOO expensive if bought regularly, and those nick too. I guess a sander is one way to clean up dirty wood, but I have seen wood come out of a wide belt with small rocks still in it, just sort of pushed deeper into the stock, waiting for the planer. No guarantee there.

If you are prepared to plane dirty wood in any event and don't want to send out knives to be reground IMO a disposable system like disp-o-blade or a tersa/terminus head might make sense. You could keep some old beaters in for initial passes and quickly flip them for clean up passes as needed given the quick change over time. These inserts are not the cheapest things going either.

[Rick Lizek]

[QUOTE=M Toupin;1046047]If durability is your priority, then I would opt for carbide. The cut won't be quite as good as fresh HSS,but they will outlast the HSS by a long shot. I would not even consider a spiral head for 2 reasons, first only HSS blades are available, and second, the replacement blade cost.

Actually with spiral heads carbide is the norm not HSS although there are a few heads that use HSS in a wrap around type of knife. Standard insert heads like Byrd, Sunhill, Grizzly and many others offer are 4 edged carbide knives. We've had these heads in commercial shops for many years and the price has come down a lot in the last few years for the hobby woodworker.

[George Petersen]

Thank you all for the feedback. The Ridgid planer has planed over 1500 blanks in 4 years, not bad for a 300 dollar Lowes special.
One problem with the planer was being limited to fairly squared wood, tapers were a problem.
I had given thought to a stroke sander, but seemed like it would be quite a bit slower and dust collection would be a problem. It would appear the spiral head may be better for fine work than what I have in mind. I think the Dispoz-a-Blade may be best suited, at least I am familiar with it, and availability of replacements will lessen the temptation to run dull "one more time"
I wish easy and cheap happened together more often.

[Rick Lizek]

As we process antique lumber we often wire brush really sand encrusted wood before milling not to mention denailing and such beofre running it through our jointers, planers or $100,000 Wadkin 12" moulder. We just use the standard HSS knives in our machines for the most part. We do have special insert carbide knives in out molding heads for the tongue and groove for flooring but they are $25 each and each head takes 4 knives so that's 8 knives for the tongue and groove at $200 per change over.

Best to run the numbers. Carbide lasts 8 times longer than HSS unless you hit dirt. We find the HSS to be cheaper on the planer and jointer in the long run for junky wood. Makita makes a nice wire brush...
http://www.timberwolftools.com/tools/makita/M-9741.html
There's cheaper ways of doing the wire brushing but rather than dealing with planing problem later, deal with it before.

We do many time more bd ft in a day than you probably do.

[M Toupin]

Actually with spiral heads carbide is the norm not HSS although there are a few heads that use HSS in a wrap around type of knife. Standard insert heads like Byrd, Sunhill, Grizzly and many others offer are 4 edged carbide knives.

I was speaking of spiral knife heads, like so; http://grizzly.com/products/6-Index-Spiral-Cutterhead/H7653

Not a helical head, or as you called them "Standard insert heads", like so; http://grizzly.com/products/Shelix-Cutterhead-8-G0490-/H8803, which take the 4 sided inserts.

Mike

[george wilson]

I like the Dispoz-a-blade. They cost less per cutting edge than sharpening,and you don't end up buying expensive new blades after a few sharpenings. Who thinks that a spiral cutterhead costs less than dispoz-a-blade ?????

The blades are 2 sided,and changing blades takes 15 min.,no adjusting.

[John Durscher]

I use a Veritas Scrub Plane from Lee Valley to do initial clean up on rough cut wood. I usually hit the board with a wire brush to do the initial cleaning and then use the scrub plane. It makes pretty quick work of getting the crud off rough cut wood. I can also quickly hone the blade when it gets dull. I'm much happier going this route than going through blades on my DW 735.

John

[Larry Edgerton]

Go to the borg and buy a hand held portable electric planer. These have reversable carbide inserts that cost very little to replace and they will do an amazing amount of work before changing is necessary. I use them to clean up OSB subfloors that have swollen at the joints from rain. These are full of sand and glue and whatever, but I still get several houses out of one set of blades, and come time for new they are only 10-20 bucks.

Use the portable to clean up all the gradoo, and then run it through the new jointer with no issues, and the jointer knives stay fresh.

I do this myself as blades for my planer are $160 bucks a crack.

[Joe Chritz]

An insert head like the Byrd will last a long time, even cutting crud like the stocks you mention.

I would highly recommend another approach however. Take a portable belt sander with 60 grit or 80 grit and run it all over the surface. A good blow down with compressed air and then to the planer or jointer.

I haven't had to rotate the inserts in my 8" Byrd head yet (that is saying something for them) but it would take 10-15 minutes to do all of them. It is very easy but there are a lot of them.

Joe

[Joe Scharle]

I've got a stack of old walnut and it's very dirty too. I used to use a belt sander to clean the boards prior to planing, but I now use my Rotex 150 with 60 grit. Cuts just as fast, but has dust control and sands flat. The disks are far cheaper than planner blades!

[David Keller NC]

"I suggest a compressor blow gun and a wire brush."

I'll second this advice. Neither HSS nor carbide tooling -any tooling, will stand up for long against sand, grit, and small rocks. Both HSS in the heat-treated state and carbide are fairly brittle - the edges will chip and shatter when they encounter debris like this (though the damage may be microscopic, the effect is a dull cutter after just a few minutes).

There's fairly easy and quick ways to do this that won't add too much labor to your operation. Simply get an angle grinder and equip it with a bronze wire brush. The occasional bronze wire that will get stuck in the wood will not damage the blades in your planer, and will not cause sparks in a dust collection system.

[george wilson]

Sanding should be the final process,since you don't want to plane embedded grits of belt,certainly. Electric plane sounds good. I always vacuum my wood if dusty,but that won't get the bird droppings,which look pretty abrasive.

[Wilbur Pan]

The fastest way of getting rid of the dirt/crud layer on a board with the least amount of maintenance I know is using a jack plane with a cambered blade. Then you can run your board over a jointer and not worry about the knives.

I don't know what size your gunstock blanks are, but some googling gave me a rough size of 20" x 8". With a jack plane, I could plane that clean in less than a minute.

Regrinding and sharpening the jack plane blade will be way easier than dealing with jointer knives, even with the spiral heads.