Hammer K3 Winner arbor pins

[scott vroom]

Woodcraft is advertising a 6" Forrest Dado King "with 30mm bore and Felder specific pin holes". Does anyone know if Felder pin borings align perfectly with the Hammer arbor pins? I recall seeing a mechanical drawing of both Felder and Hammer borings and they were slightly different in location....but it was awhile back and I'm not certain if that's correct.

[Erik Loza]

Woodcraft is advertising a 6" Forrest Dado King "with 30mm bore and Felder specific pin holes". Does anyone know if Felder pin borings align perfectly with the Hammer arbor pins? I recall seeing a mechanical drawing of both Felder and Hammer borings and they were slightly different in location....but it was awhile back and I'm not certain if that's correct.



I wasn't aware there was a difference but if so, it must not matter: All the blades are interchangeable. So, I would say "yes", you can use that set. Hope this helps,

Erik

[Steve Wurster]

I own that same Dado set. I bought it from Slivers Mill a little over a year ago. It fits the K3 just fine, and in fact on their website they list it as supporting "Felder/Hammer saws".

One thing to note: One outer blade (the right-side one that goes on first) has 4 pin holes instead of 2. Why? Because you use one set of holes when only matching it up with the other outer blade for 1/4" wide cuts, and you use the other set of holes when adding chippers for wider cuts (as the chippers are setup to never interfere). You might want to mark which set of holes are which so you're not misaligning things from the get-go.

It's a good set, although it's a bit tedious to put on and take off the saw, mostly because of the pin holes (i.e. it's a snug fit to slide the blades on and off). It's also pretty height-limited due to the pin holes and the large arbor washers we get with Felder-based saws. And of course the K3 can't take an 8" dado blade because of the trunnion mounts, so we are kind of limited.

[scott vroom]

Thanks guys...you answered my question.

Erik, I was quoted August for a new A31...wow! Must be Covid related?

[Erik Loza]

Scott, that lead time is correct. Yeah, Covid. To give a more detailed explanation, it's not Felder. We had a zoom meeting recently with Austria. Felder KG actually hired something like 100 additional workers for the assembly line on standard (non-CNC) machines. The issue has been that demand for Hammer and Felder standard machines never let up, despite the pandemic. Austria has shut down a couple of times and the long lead time we have is just a function of the backlog of orders the production line is working through. There are lesser, ancillary issues with OEM parts suppliers like fasteners, extrusions, etc. that have slowed us down a little but most of our situation is due to the fact that jointer/planers never stopped selling. If I had a truckload of used A3's, I could sell them all tomorrow.

Erik

[Paul Christy]

My K3 gets here tomorrow. I've been desperately researching dado blades for it--anything but Hammer's which cost a quarter of the saw price, fahgawdsake. I'm thinking Forrest, but with months out delivery times on all these things, I guess I'll just put the dado thing off for a while. Anybody have a better idea?

[Robyn Horton]

Congratulations on your New K3.
I just purchased the Felder Dado for my K3 about a month ago .. Yep it Costs a lot but so did the saw. I've made several finger joint boxes just over the past 2 weekends and have had Great results with it. Think it was about a month to get it in after placing the order.

[Erik Loza]

My K3 gets here tomorrow. I've been desperately researching dado blades for it--anything but Hammer's which cost a quarter of the saw price, fahgawdsake. I'm thinking Forrest, but with months out delivery times on all these things, I guess I'll just put the dado thing off for a while. Anybody have a better idea?

https://ridgecarbidetool.com/collections/dado-sets/products/8-x-24t-x-5-hk-x-8-pc-x-4t-chipper-dado-master-30mm-bore-felder-machine

[Steve Wurster]

https://ridgecarbidetool.com/collections/dado-sets/products/8-x-24t-x-5-hk-x-8-pc-x-4t-chipper-dado-master-30mm-bore-felder-machine

That seems to be an 8" dado blade. You can't use 8" dado blades in a Hammer K3 because of the trunnions. You are limited to ~6" max.

It looks like the Forrest Dado Max from Slivers Mill is available: https://www.sliversmill.com/category_3_Dado_King_Sets.html That's the unit I have, but see my comment above regarding its "ease of use".

[Wes Grass]

'Holes', is the issue. The Felder tooling I have are slotted. Holes need a fair bit of clearance to easily slide on, slots not so much.

And, IMO, it's just plain stupid to put the 4 holes in the first blade to be put on. At least put 4 in both.

[Steve Wurster]

'Holes', is the issue. The Felder tooling I have are slotted. Holes need a fair bit of clearance to easily slide on, slots not so much.

And, IMO, it's just plain stupid to put the 4 holes in the first blade to be put on. At least put 4 in both.

What do you mean by your blade / tooling having slots? Is it not the Felder standard of 30mm arbor and 2 pin holes?

And, yeah, the Forrest model with 4 holes on the one blade is quite annoying.

[Chris Parks]

That seems to be an 8" dado blade. You can't use 8" dado blades in a Hammer K3 because of the trunnions. You are limited to ~6" max.

It looks like the Forrest Dado Max from Slivers Mill is available: https://www.sliversmill.com/category_3_Dado_King_Sets.html That's the unit I have, but see my comment above regarding its "ease of use".

Yes and no, I use an 8" set on mine but it restricts how high you can get the blades due to the tabs for the table insert but I have never found I needed any more height since I bought the set. I found a brand new 30mm bore CMT set for not much money because it had been ordered with the wrong bore size but it was not drilled for pins. We set it up on a mill as carefully as possible and drilled the pin holes and when I used it the finish was a disaster because blades weren't anywhere near concentric enough. I took the whole lot to my sawyer and he set it up, ground the blades to get them concentric using the pin holes and re-sharpened the set and it is now superb, not a groove anywhere right across the bottom of the trench/rabbet.