J.R. Rutter
03-05-2007, 4:38 PM
Last year, I bought a heavy duty planer to replace my 20" Shop Fox. It didn't ship until after the new year, and I finally got it tuned up and into service last month. It is sort of an oddball in that it does not have segmented feed or chipbreaker, but I learned to work with that on the Shop Fox, so it isn't that big a deal to me. The previous owner put the Shelix head in, along with bearings. He also installed a ProScale digital height gauge (and did a nice job).
It is a Rockwell/Invicta RC-63 (24 3/4" wide capacity) mfg in 1983. Original 7 1/2 HP motor. Cast iron everything, including the hinged lid over the cutterhead. Someone did some drilling on the starter control plate at some point, which is a shame, but doesn't affect anything except cosmetics. It is a 4-screw raise/lower setup, so the bed is well supported and shouldn't rock around.
When we first tried it, we got bad snipe. Lived with it for a few days until the weekend when I could take the lid off and see what was going on. Turns out the pressure bar was on upside-down, so it wasn't contacting the wood at all after the cutterhead. No wonder it was sniping. Turns out that it needed to have 1/64" of steel filed off each end to get it back to flat. While I was at it, I filed the outside edges of the chipbreaker to get it closer to flat as well. It is like a whole different machine with everything set properly and the spring tension dialed in.
Before I bought it, I checked into used SCMI planers and the new crop of Taiwanese/Chinese insert head digital control planers. It was interesting to see that SCMI and others are offering the current models with Shelix heads as opposed to the straight inserts. But the price was right on this one, and I don't mind hand cranking the bed up and down once in a while!
Couldn't resist posting a few shots of the beastie!
It is a Rockwell/Invicta RC-63 (24 3/4" wide capacity) mfg in 1983. Original 7 1/2 HP motor. Cast iron everything, including the hinged lid over the cutterhead. Someone did some drilling on the starter control plate at some point, which is a shame, but doesn't affect anything except cosmetics. It is a 4-screw raise/lower setup, so the bed is well supported and shouldn't rock around.
When we first tried it, we got bad snipe. Lived with it for a few days until the weekend when I could take the lid off and see what was going on. Turns out the pressure bar was on upside-down, so it wasn't contacting the wood at all after the cutterhead. No wonder it was sniping. Turns out that it needed to have 1/64" of steel filed off each end to get it back to flat. While I was at it, I filed the outside edges of the chipbreaker to get it closer to flat as well. It is like a whole different machine with everything set properly and the spring tension dialed in.
Before I bought it, I checked into used SCMI planers and the new crop of Taiwanese/Chinese insert head digital control planers. It was interesting to see that SCMI and others are offering the current models with Shelix heads as opposed to the straight inserts. But the price was right on this one, and I don't mind hand cranking the bed up and down once in a while!
Couldn't resist posting a few shots of the beastie!