Can you have planer knives resized at a machine shop?

[Bob DiGiacomo]

I bought a bunch of woodworking tools / hardware at a garage sale, and found 3 sets of HSS planer knives that are too big for my planer.

I looked on ebay to see if I could sell them, but no one had knives for sale that were the same size as mine. My thought is my knives are from an old machine?

I am trying to figure out what brand planer takes knives that are
16" X 1.5" X 1/8", so that I can advertise them and sell them. I would ask the guy i got them from, but he is dead.


My question is can I have these knives ground down to 15" X 1.25 X 1/8 at a machine shop, and if so how expensive would it be for HSS 6 knives?

thanks Bob

[Gary Keedwell]

I bought a bunch of woodworking tools / hardware at a garage sale, and found 3 sets of HSS planer knives that are too big for my planer.

I looked on ebay to see if I could sell them, but no one had knives for sale that were the same size as mine. My thought is my knives are from an old machine?

I am trying to figure out what brand planer takes knives that are
16" X 1.5" X 1/8", so that I can advertise them and sell them. I would ask the guy i got them from, but he is dead.


My question is can I have these knives ground down to 15" X 1.25 X 1/8 at a machine shop, and if so how expensive would it be for HSS 6 knives?

thanks Bob
Bob...To go from 1.5 to 1.25 would be a bear to grind. One quarter inch in the world of grinding, is huge. My guess is that it would cost alot more then their worth to grind that much stock off.
Gary K.

[Greg Peterson]

I can't speak to whether or not a machine shop can downsize your blades.

My experience with machine shops is they get tool working steel too hot and loses its temper. You can see the blue at the edges where they ground them.

I had one machine shop cut a new bevel on a block plane blade and they got it too hot.

I took some chisels to a tool sharpening shop and not only did they not get the bevel perpendicular to the side of the blade (a slight skew), but even they overheated the metal.

You might talk to whoever may take on such a task and make clear that they can not over heat the metal and the cutting edge of the tool has to be parallel with the back edge of the blade.

Good luck.

[Phil Thien]

The only good way to do that would be water jet or laser. Waterjet would be optimum. But laser is okay seeing as you're nowhere near the cutting edge (the laser cuts quickly and wouldn't introduce enough heat close enough to the bevel to affect the tempering).

But unless you know someone w/ a big laser or waterjet, the setup cost is gonna kill ya.

[Bruce Page]

Bob, as Gary said, it would cost more than they are worth.

[Scott Whiting]

Cutting an inch off of the end is no big deal, at worst with a good cutoff saw you might lose temper on 1/16 at the end. To mount them in sets of three on the water cooled grinder and take off a full 1/4" would tie up the grinder for a long time. Because setup is a constant no matter how much you take off you should expect to pay maybe twice the standard rate rather than multiple times like the amount of material removal would suggest. Most of the 15" planers I know take 1" knives as standard so that would mean 1/2" off of the face. To grind them on anything other than a grinder made for that purpose is asking for trouble at least 95% of the time.

As to the remark about chisels in a sharpening shop. I am sorry to hear they got toasted. I agree anything hotter than a tinge of brown that polishes out is too hot. Blue is definitely a bad color.

[Michael Schwartz]

I would take lawnmower blades to a "Sharpening Shop" but unless you know the person doing the sharpening, the methods they use, and trust them with woodworking tools, don't even bother.

I know of a guy who showed up for a woodcarving class with a set of brand new tools he had "Professionally Sharpened"

The gouges, and other tools in the set were all ground at least 2 inches, the steel blued, and the profiles all messed up, and they were in a state you could hardly call sharp.


Even worse, when he got the tools he had them sharpened, and as he used them, and the blued edge dulled faster than you could grind one, he took them back to the same guy to have the re sharpened again a few times :eek: This was the cause of the shortness.

This was kind of a shock to the guy when the Instructer looked at his tools and told him his "brand new professionaly sharpened" tools were basically useless.

Bottom line, if you are a woodworker, learn to sharpen your own hand tools.

[Steve Clardy]

I bought a bunch of woodworking tools / hardware at a garage sale, and found 3 sets of HSS planer knives that are too big for my planer.

I looked on ebay to see if I could sell them, but no one had knives for sale that were the same size as mine. My thought is my knives are from an old machine?

I am trying to figure out what brand planer takes knives that are
16" X 1.5" X 1/8", so that I can advertise them and sell them. I would ask the guy i got them from, but he is dead.


My question is can I have these knives ground down to 15" X 1.25 X 1/8 at a machine shop, and if so how expensive would it be for HSS 6 knives?

thanks Bob

Bob. Check the clearance on your planer to see if you can run the 1.5" high knives.
Like scott said, the length is easy to trim down.


My 20" planer uses 1" high knives, but theres enough clearance for 1.25" knives in there.
A year or so ago I picked up 4 sets of 1.25x24" knives for a bigger planer at the Grizzly tent sale. [$5.00 per set;) ]
A friend of mine does sharpening part time, and he cut the length down for me with a air cutoff saw.

Beware, your heighth gauge wiil be off that .250