Byrd Shelix spiral head or house brand for General 130 planer

[Link Van Cleave]

Anyone compare these. The Byrd is 4 sided and the General has less knives and they are 2 sided. I am interested in cost to operate, cut quality, ease of adjustment, etc.
Thanks.

[seth lowden]

I don't know anything about the General except what I just read on the General website. I can imagine there may be a little less surface scalloping with the General, and the fact that they do not require a special torque wrench is a plus.

The real reason I posted in this thread is to ask if you would start a thread in the handtool forum with pictures of your workbench???

Thanks!!

[Gerald Senburn]

An inch-pound torque wrench is only about $30 and available on Amazon, so it's not that big of a deal.

Just curious, why do you think there would be less scalloping with the General?

[seth lowden]

It looks like the two-sided cutters on the General are longer, and perhaps straighter (maybe even straight across). It depends on the radius of the cutter and the angle it hits the board, I guess. I don't know, is it an apples and oranges thing in terms of the cutting dynamics?

The scalloping is not a problem, easier to handplane out than 1/8 deep chunks ripped out of contrary grained timber. I have a Byrd on my planer, and have one to put on my jointer but have not gotten around to it.

Like I said, I broke one of my own rules by commenting on something I don't know about, so I could ask for pix of his cool Swede bench. I vaguely remember someone on Badger Pond having a bench from Målilla Hyvelbänkar. I saw Mr. Van Cleave referenced on the workbenches.se website a few weeks ago.

[Link Van Cleave]

Seth,
You have a good memory! I will try to find some pictures and if I don't have any I can scrape all the stuff off of it and take a few.
Link

[Jonathan Spool]

I recommend that you check, and compare, the cost of replacement cutters, per set.

[Link Van Cleave]

I did. The Byrd is 1/2 the cost. So far I can't find any information about the general head.

L.

[ron ogle]

Dont know anything about General but have Byrd cutter on my 8 inch powermatic joiner and it is great.[ wish I could say the same for the rest of the joiner] better than 99% no tear out on hickory and scallops easily sand out on final sanding