4 head planers

[andy photenas]

Hello all, I am starting to get to a point where jointing and planing wood on my machines alone is a lot of physical work for me and fairly time consuming.
What machine is able to joint and plane all sides of a rough 4/4 x 12" is about the biggest i use. This would be for mostly doing doors rail and stiles from rough. I did look into this a bit and i am not sure after doing so what i need to look at !
Also are these machines able to make door making stock in one pass?
And the one thing that worries me most is im a home shop in my barn. So as you can guess 3phase power is not an option for me. and I only have about 60 amps running to my shop atm.

That said are there any machines that can do this in the 60amp range?

i looked into a logosol p260 but i cant find any decent reviews on it.

Thanks again for any input all!

[Mark Daily]

If you google it there are several forums that talk about it like this one:

https://forestryforum.com/board/index.php?topic=26307.0

[glenn bradley]

If you are making tongue and groove flooring or other interlocking mill-work that fastens to a substrate, this type of machine is for you. If you are hoping to get material blanks for making furniture right out of the machine like the Jetson's, probably not so much. Even for good success with flooring, wall board and so forth I think you will find people saying things like "The key is to ensure you have straight material going into the unit". It sounds like you are targeting getting flat and parallel stock from rough without any pre-work. I would watch the videos and see what the blanks look like being fed into these machines to be sure that this is what you are thinking of.

[peter gagliardi]

A four sided molder can make quick work of a pile of wood. However, I would not use it to mill door parts unless you pre-mill all the parts to flat and straight on the jointer first. That of course negates some of the advantage.
It is unlikely you will get a flat door that is "in plane" otherwise.

There is a saying in the molder biz- "garbage in, garbage out"

[Scott T Smith]

We make a lot of flooring and T&G V groove boards for ceilings. Our process is to run the material through a twin blade edger or straight line rip saw in order to size the blank width, and then the blanks go through a 5 head moulder.

Pre-sizing is pretty important, at least in terms of having straight edges.

As far as 60 amps is concerned, maybe if it was 480V and 60A (good for 30 hp total), but you probably won't have the power needed for single pass work on an 8/4 board in a 60A 240 single phase machine.

[Peter Kelly]

https://youtu.be/q9CRT_1Pvy0

If you check his YT channel he's got some other videos with different operations of PH260. I think the Woodmizer MP260 is the same machine.

By "60a range" I'd assume you're looking for a single phase machine? You're options are probably limited to the two aforementioned units if so.

[johnny means]

We process most of our lumber through a 24" two sided planer. Its fast and powerful, but dumb. Twist in, twist out. It has almost no jointing affect on material at all. To me, it simply makes rough lumber less rough. It's great for flattening <24" glue-ups, but almost useless for milling furniture parts.

[William Hodge]

The Weinig Quatromat has a jointer table as an infeed. You just feed the wood as if jointing it over a bottom head, and a set of rollers grabs the wood on what would be the jointer outfeed table, and brings it by side cutters and a top cutter. 23 horsepower, and at least a 10 hp blower to collect the dust.

Without the jointer infeed, the stock does need to be faced if you want it flat.

For two months I ran my shop on a line from a 60 amp panel, in the house, 500' away. I don't know how many amps and volts managed to make it to the shop. I had a table saw with a water pump motor on it. The motor was one sixth horsepower. When I was ripping stuff, the lights would flicker. After I got a job in, I put in a 200 amp panel and a 20hp phase converter. The old electric line from the house got used as a phone line.

Andy, I think you need a bigger electrical service. That little four sider draws 50 amps, and the blower it needs has to draw more than 10. If it doesn't flatten wood like a jointer, it doesn't seem worth the hefty price tag.

[Mark Bolton]

The quadromat or equivalent molder with jointing station on the infeed was going to be my comment also but if course your talking an industrial machine that is likely as big as your shop.

Part of your answer may be to eliminate some percentage of your work by buying higher grades of material and being willing to pay your supplier to get you at least a little bit closer to the usable material you want. If that means skip planed and straight line ripped one edge for a price it's a heck of a lot cheaper that time, tooling, and houghing around drums of chips. Bringing your 4/4 material into your shop at 15/16 or 7/8 would get rid of a mile of work and a truckload of chips and still leave you plenty of room to do whatever you need to do.

[andy photenas]

wow such great info guys ! thanks so much. I think i need to upgrade my electrical service before i can look at any of those bigger machines.
Do you guys think a change from 3hp straight knife planer to a 5 hp helical planer would take less passes to get too 13/16 thickness ?

[Matt Day]

You’re kind of changing gears with your last post. If you simply need a bigger planer to hog off more material in a single pass there are a lot of options out there.

Need more info. 13/16 from what? 4/4? And what planets are you taking about?

[Mark Bolton]

wow such great info guys ! thanks so much. I think i need to upgrade my electrical service before i can look at any of those bigger machines.
Do you guys think a change from 3hp straight knife planer to a 5 hp helical planer would take less passes to get too 13/16 thickness ?

What you probably have to quantify is that planing your material is a roughing operation. A planer (other than a super high end jointing planer) is just as Johnny posted above.. crap in.. smooth parallel faced crap out. After the planer you still have jointing, edging (which may be jointing or straight-line in one operation), and surfacing the two remaining sides.


To nip all the information in the bud.. you have zero potential, or capacity for a machine that is going to take rought material in one side, and output even reasonably close to usable material on the other. That machine will require a space and capacity that likely consumes your entire property's capacity in size and utility supply.

Your smartest option is to either find comfort in the notion that you enjoy processing material from dead rough to finished board OR realize that you'd rather spend your time building things as opposed to handing chips and sawdust.

Either option is fine.

We can buy low grade dead rough material super cheap. Its always tempting. But the mill has a really nice S2S and SLR1E setup, and when we are in a rush we will pull in some dead rough and every single time its a nightmare. This compared to walking out to a pack of material and every single board you pull out goes straight to work.

Quantify the value of your time or own the concept that you enjoy owning and using tools and your just going to process wood from rough even though your losing your shirt.

At that point life will get easier.

[andy photenas]

hmm now thts a great idea also! I have stayed away from that style of wood because i have never seen a pre jointed board in a store that was straight still. so i assumed that you needed to joint on site right before u use the wood.

Is the s2s wood 3/4 thickness already or is it a bit thicker still? ( i cut all my stuff to 13/16 so that when i level and sand them they come out a full 3/4" still. Im not sure if that is the standard thing to do or not ?

PS i love using my tools but building 30-50 doors alone at 48 years old ,Im starting to feel it in my body.

Again this is such a stimulating form thanks again my good people!

[Richard Coers]

If you are short on electrical service, outsourcing this work is a great option. You'd have to really run a ton of stock to justify a Weinig in your shop.

[Mark Bolton]

pre jointed board in a store that was straight still

No one said anything about a "pre-jointed board"... where did you see that? The notion is you let your supply rough off the bulk of the material from dead rough but leave you enough material to get your work flat.Taking a board from dead rough to close to flat equals a MILE of chips. Taking it from close to flat to flat is just a few chips provided your not trying to turn dog crap twisted low grade wood into some sort of boutique woodcraft 90$ a board foot lumber.

[J.R. Rutter]

Weinig Quattromat, SCMI Sintex, Martin T90 all are 4-head S4S machines with a jointer infeed. The Martin will even handle random width material if needed.

I use a 5-head moulder for cabinet door production. Very nearly every board gets ripped into strips and fed through it to s4s. With attention paid to how much material gets removed top and bottom, it typically works out well - especially if you pre-chop into shorter rough lengths. Flattest/straightest goes for the larger doors and the crowned stuff goes to smaller stuff like matching drawer faces or glued up into slabs. Keeping careful track of crown helps avoid twist at least...

[andy photenas]

No gear changing I asked how to make door stock from rough stock and it seems most ppl would know to use 4/4 for that.

thanks for the info i will do more research on the s2s that seems the best option for me in my case

Does anyone know if s2s is jointed or run through a 4 head planer to get it close to end goal thickness ?

[J.R. Rutter]

No gear changing I asked how to make door stock from rough stock and it seems most ppl would know to use 4/4 for that.

thanks for the info i will do more research on the s2s that seems the best option for me in my case

Does anyone know if s2s is jointed or run through a 4 head planer to get it close to end goal thickness ?

S2S varies from supplier to supplier, but the better companies will use a double sided planer with a "finger chain" feed that does joint some on one face before hitting the second face parallel. But there is only so much you can do with a long board going from rough 4/4 to 15/16 or 13/16. Garbage in, garbage out.

For me, if I have to get rough stock because that is all that is available, I will rip it and then take two passes through the moulder with no side heads so that it does end up being an S2S H&M on the first pass, and then and S4S on the second pass. And I will still do crosscuts on the rough rips as needed to end up with flatter stock. Normally, I buy 15/16 and skim it to 0.85" to finish the doors out at 13/16"

[Mark Bolton]

No gear changing I asked how to make door stock from rough stock and it seems most ppl would know to use 4/4 for that.

thanks for the info i will do more research on the s2s that seems the best option for me in my case

Does anyone know if s2s is jointed or run through a 4 head planer to get it close to end goal thickness ?

As JR said, what you have access to for S2S can vary a lot. Its worth asking when you call for hardwood pricing or whoever is going to surface your material. If they are simply running stock through a conventional planer (regardless of size, 2 sided, 4 sided) you are going to have zero jointing. Depending on the prices you get for the quantities you buy, even having the rough knocked off the boards and letting them get you to hit or miss, and one straight edge, will help you immensely. At the very least it will eliminate hauling all those chips back to your shop in board form only to then have to get rid of them. Same for the off-falls on the straight line rip. Your going to cut it off anyway. Why load it in your vehicle, pack it home, just to throw it away.

As always, if your doing something odd, or buying some odd piece of material where you need all the thickness you can get to get it flat, you may still have to start from rough.

My small shop, I just cant deal with all the chips, the waste, and the time, to start from dead rough. And while I enjoy the cost savings of buying lower grades of material and being able to cull out the super nice high grade thats mixed in, I more often than not simply dont have the time nor the space to sort/grade material in-house and then sit on the high grade thinking Im going to save it for something special. For that reason I typically bring in the highest grade I possibly can across the board, surfaced to whatever the job calls for (allowing for sanding and flattening if needed) so that pretty much every board comes straight off the pack and goes to work.

As JR outlined, in-house grading and surfacing is a MAJOR undertaking even for small quantities of material.