Manufacturers for custom helical / tersa heads

[Jonathan Jung]

Well I've had a deposit in with Hermance for 13 months now. They keep stringing me along. Every month is more empty promises about when the helical head for my Oliver jointer will be ready. I was told it would be in production in February/March and there's still no trustworthy end in sight. Late last year Hermance sold their head division to their neighbor H3D tooling. But they have the drawings, my $1000 deposit, the machines, all they're lacking is honesty about what their problem is. I've asked, but they just beat around the bush.

So I'm looking for alternatives companies to make a helical, insert, or tersa head. I've contacted Great Lakes Custom Tool, Byrd, Hermance, and a couple smaller companies. GLCT would want $3-4k, nearly double Hermance. Byrd wants about the same as Hermance, but I would like a more refined head design if I can get it.

Any suggestions?

[Mel Fulks]

Have you used it at all ?

[Jonathan Jung]

Used what at all?

[Mel Fulks]

The jointer as is.

[Mel Fulks]

Oops, sorry. Guess I thought you had bought it used and not had it set up. And I guess my careless read was because I prefer the
“ long knives” as the Indians in the old Western cowboy movies referred to the cavalry! I’ve always found that problems with straight
knives was just from inferior steel . Hope to can speed up the company and get what you want.

[Mark Gibney]

That's got to be frustrating! Have you called H3D Toolings? - presume you have but just checking. Maybe not that supply chains seem to be working better they'll get moving on this.

[Dave Sabo]

Why don’t you get your deposit refunded and just move on ?

[Kevin Jenness]

My son had a terrible experience with Byrd, similar to yours except that the stringing along finally produced an undersized cutterhead installed in a damaged power plane and the refund took almost as long as the initial wait. Maybe an anomaly, but I would hesitate to deal with them on a custom product.

I would suggest either paying the upcharge for GLCT if they can give what you want in a reasonable time frame or settle for straight knives. Sorry I can't recommend another maker. $4k or so seems to me like a lot for a jointer head unless you are regularly dealing with highly figured wood. I'd rather have a helical in a planer. I use carbide straight knives in my 16" jointer, and they have served me well. When I have problematic material I saw the edges on a slider and sand from there.

[Phillip Mitchell]

For Tersa style there is, of course, Tersa but also Terminus. I have a Terminus head in my 12” Oliver and it is everything I want in a jointer cutterhead and has the option to switch between carbide knives and HSS in about 5 minutes with no outfeed table adjustments.

I have stated my preference before on this forum for Tersa/Terminus style insert knives over helical in a jointer and won’t really get into the whys again. Since you’re talking about writing the check for it, I’d certainly strongly consider it over something like Byrd, which is extremely popular / high profile...though not necessarily the highest quality relative to some of the other choices mentioned so far.

Not sure if there’s a difference in price between Tersa and Terminus but the design / engineering and reviews are very similar between the two.

[Kevin Jenness]

Tersa style heads are a good alternative for sure. If the issue is milling highly figured material though, a segmented head is likely the better choice. I've found that the time between changing carbide knives in a conventional head is long enough that I wouldn't pay to upgrade to Tersa just for convenience in my one man shop.

[Richard Mellor]

Well, I'm glad I read this, I was about to order a head for my Felder AD 741, and they had told me it was about a 2-month lead time. I think I will email my salesman a link to this thread and see what he says.

[Jonathan Jung]

I'll look into Terminus, thanks.

For H3D, yes, I've been in contact with Riley, the production manager, for several months. He's absolutely useless. Keeps pushing production out and forgetting what my order is even. Has asked me 2 or 3 times for the same info about my order, so it's clear he's not writing anything down. I've also talked with Mark Strecker, the west coast sales rep, he said he'd look into it. That was 2 or 3 weeks ago. Never called me back. A few days ago I left him a message. Still no response.

The majority of what I run on the jointer is walnut, then maple, birch, cherry, etc. I've had the jointer a year with straight knives. The chipout at figure and knots is a problem, as well as the knife changeout time commitment. We are a 2 man shop and need to maximize billable labour hours.

At $3-4k for a GLCT head, I may just sell the jointer and get a nice condition SCM, Felder, or Martin, etc.

[Mel Fulks]

Jonathan, thanks for the update. You have done a great service that I hope slows down their orders to just what they can actually fill.
But ,of course that will put them out of that ‘biz. In many years of doing custom mill-work I educated bosses who had to run nearly every
piece of wood through through wide -belt sanders ,just because they were using the lowest quality knives. Every new planer or jointer I
saw was shipped with a cheery caution to buy their future needed knives from them ! To get boss to stop using the wide-belt for a
planer ,and start using it as a sander I had to convince them to buy T1 or M2 knives by swearing to buy them back if they were not
convinced that the good knives were better than the rubbish they had been buying. I never lost a penny.

[Steve Jenkins]

I’ve been a huge fan of Dispozablade for years. High quality double edged blades. Self indexing. High speed steel or Kobalt (similar to carbide). They are straight blades.

[Jonathan Jung]

Well, I'm glad I read this, I was about to order a head for my Felder AD 741, and they had told me it was about a 2-month lead time. I think I will email my salesman a link to this thread and see what he says.

Richard, I'd be interested to know what he has to say.

[Kevin Jenness]

At $3-4k for a GLCT head, I may just sell the jointer and get a nice condition SCM, Felder, or Martin, etc.

If you can find that unicorn with a helical head for less than you can get out of the Oliver plus the cost of installing a new head you definitely should do that. On the other hand if the Oliver has flat tables and a decent fence and guard the other machines are not going to do any better job for you. A bird in hand...

I suspect Tersa heads are far more prevalent than helical in used jointers. Tersa will save time and make it easier to keep sharp knives in place but if you are dissatisfied with conventional straight knife performance as to tearout Tersa/Terminus are probably not the answer.

[Richard Mellor]

Jonathan, I sent you a pm,

[Jonathan Jung]

Richard, thanks for that. His response is basically a non-answer, similar to what I got from the other sales rep Mark. There's nothing concrete to go off of, such as "our CNC is giving us problems," or "our lead operator quit." Covid is not a valid reason to be delaying work, and the acquisition to H3D doesn't allow for 9 months of delays. It just doesn't add up. I'd rather they just be honest about why it's taking so long.

[Mel Fulks]

My guess is they find it easier to build a legend than a good product . Like those wonderful special rifles of the Old West that everyone
wanted but could never get ! Winchester 44 ! Just now saw something out the window that reminded me !

[Robert London]

Trust your instinct on business deals. I would cut ties, and ask for an immediate refund. Leave a review on their site and be honest about your experience.

If you're getting strung along for 13 months, I would not follow through with the order. They sound like they have no clue where your order is, and you'll probably never get it.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Hopefully not relevant, but I've been dealing with a company for most of a year, lots of the same feedback and delays for the products I had ordered. Obviously something was broken in the company somewhere, but they never allowed the contact people to give a straight answer. Yesterday I got notice that they filed for chapter 11. Like I said, lots of similarities.