Byrd Cutter head

[joe maday]

Does any body use a torque wrench to tighten the cutters on the Byrd head?
I ocasionally get lines in the surface of the planed boards from my Jet planer with the shelix head, I then remove the cutters in the area around the head , then clean well and reinstall. I had called grizzly on another issue and this came up and they (the engineer) said to use a torque wrench to get consistant results and cutter height on the head.... usually there is dust/oil under the cutters and that would stop the cutters from seating correctlly... Any ideas or experiance?
I'm thinking of putting one in a jointer but if the resulting surface is not "flat" then glue joints would be effected in some way. Better off with the straight knives?.

[glenn bradley]

I had read enough horror stories about poor results, broken inserts and so forth that I went ahead and got a torque wrench. I have more than one machine with an insert head so I felt it was worth it. The inserts I have rotated (full heads) have all gone text book. No issues during or after.

[joe milana]

I called Byrd the first time I went to rotate my inserts to ask about a torque wrench and they recommended I save some money & get one from harbor freight.:cool: I've rotated mine several times (on last side of my second set now) using my trusty HF torque wrench & have never had an issue. I believe the secret is simply keep things clean.

[Myk Rian]

Does any body use a torque wrench to tighten the cutters on the Byrd head?
Yes. 55 lbs/in.
I only change/rotate when one breaks/chips. I mark the used edges with a permanent marker.

[Cary Falk]

I have a Byrd in my jointer. I was getting crappy results until I removed all of the inserts and cleaned everything. I put them back in with this one from HF.
http://www.harborfreight.com/1-4-quarter-inch-drive-click-type-torque-wrench-2696.html

[joe maday]

When I priced torque wrenches on the internet, the prices were from 15.00 to over 200.00. At first it was hard to belive that the wrench from Harbor Frieght would be useable. but after looking at photos on the web, I think alot of brands are the same wrench. I'll pick one up tomorrow. ( I even have a 20% off coupon! talk about being cheap!).

[Dave Cav]

I used a H.F. inch/lb torque wrench and retightened all the inserts on my jointer, planer and planer at school. They were all over the place when I started and they all seem to cut a little more smoothly and consistently now that I've tightened them.

I have a couple of H.F. torque wrenches and they seem to work fine for light general purpose work.

[Ian Radin]

When rotating mine, I used torque wrench because it was at hand. As HF's are so inexpensive seems reasonable to use one. However I find it very difficult to believe that, given the extreme stiffness of tungsten carbide and the high stiffness of steel head, (assuming of course clean insert and pocket) that the difference between say 30 and 60 in.lb. would amount anything even remotely detectable in the wood finish. I would wager that head pocket tolerances would be orders of magnitude greater. not to mention bearing, roller tolerances. The minor scallops along the board are probably due to the fact that their are a finite number of small cutters. As they say, just my opinion.

[Ian Radin]

Not to flog a dead horse, but I forgot to mention that capscrew stretch would overwhelm any pocket insert compression.

[Jery Madigan]

I think I'll continue to go with with Byrd's opinion/recommendation and use the torque wrench personally.

[Andy Pratt]

I have one of these cutterheads and highly doubt that any visible issues in a planed wood surface are caused by not following the torque specs. When I have rotated the cutterheads I make sure everything is clean and the "defects" are always minimal (but not absent, always seem to have a micro ridge or two within the tolerance of what I would sand out anyway). I have tried it both with and without using the torque specs with no major difference. To be honest I had a bit nicer finish after not torquing to spec. Please note that I recommend following the torque specs (and do so), but I did try it without out of curiosity. Torque specs should be followed for good practice (to not break your cutters or distort your head threads), but I'm pretty sure that most people who aren't using a torque wrench on their cutterheads are over-torquing not under. I don't think any of us are compressing a carbide cutterhead with hand strength so we can assume any adequately or over-tightened fasteners are all equal depth unless there is a manufacturing defect in the head seat (never heard of this happening on a byrd head) or we have let debris get in there. I would wager that debris causing misalignment is the only common cause of cut quality issues in these cutterheads. Each bit is a precise fit on a small, angled bearing surface so it makes sense that a tiny piece of debris could cause a ridge/valley in a piece of planed wood.

My advice: pay more attention to total cleanliness on the head when rotating cutters than to the torque settings. I'm sure you are checking the face (around the threaded area for each cutter) and the seat (vertical ridge part that holds each in a specific spot) of your cutter head so I won't go into that, just remember that tiny things make a big difference here so don't take the "good enough" approach. My policy is that if I can see something different, it gets removed. The main thing I would say is don't forget to check the bottom and new registration edge side of the cutter itself, if there is a tiny wood shard in there pressed against the cutter from previous work it is definitely going to throw you off.

edit: You have to completely remove each cutter to really check for this, and if you're setting the screw for each down somewhere in the meantime it would be easy to have the screw grab some wood dust etc. that then gets transferred to the cutter face as you are tightening. I honestly don't worry about this personally but it could be an issue if you are changing things over in a dirty shop, it only takes one cutter being proud to make a ridge.

Things increasing the height/forwardness of the leading edge of a cutter will be noticeable, things that decrease it you'll probably never notice (that tooth just doesn't cut in that case).

[Ken Harris]

I had a byrd head and did torque screws down what I had trouble with was keeping screw head centered in cutterhead as I was torquing screw.I just aquired grizzly spiral cutterhead for my dj20 because there is a more pocket area to keep cutter in place,just my .02