Does a spiral cutterhead == smooth plane

[Charles Davis]

I have the Griz G0490 jointer and have been thinking about adding the Byrd spiral cutterhead but do I really NEED it. I'm already in the habit of taking a smoothing plane to my board faces after milling. I presume that you still need to take a few swipes with a hand plane after jointing/planing with a spiral cutterhead so I guess it just saves a few extra swipes of the plane as compared to a knives cutterhead?

Is the spiral cutterhead aimed at more power tool-oritented people that want to go from the jointer/planer to finish sanding?

Thanks for any insight here!
-Charles

[Chuck Tringo]

dont have one myself, but from what I have read and understand, spiral cutterheads dont help a bunch in that area, they mostly help by:

1) Lasting ALOT longer between Sharpening/changing blades
2) Greatly reducing tearout on Highly figured/endgrain/highly dense woods

Ive actually heard that many leave small scallops that need to be removed by sanding/hand planing, though some of the newer ones supposedly don't have this problem or at least reduce it.

[Joe Jensen]

Charles, I spent almost 30 years with straight steel knives and now about 2 years with Byrd heads. To answer your question, I don't think any solution exists that will replace a well sharpened smoothing plane, certainly not any jointer or planer head. Having said that, there is a big difference in removing .001" or less to get that final finish, and removing 1/64th" deep tearout.

I switched because I moved to much more figured woods and tearout was a real problem for me. Also, I've very picky on knife setting, and I was tired of setting knives. Many claim that steel knives give a superior surface, and I think they do, for the first 100 feet or so. Then the carbide is better, and better for a LONG time. I have never intentionaly gone from planer to finish, and the times I have I was very disappointed to see the tiny ripples in the surface. The ripples are different with a spiral head, but one still needs to do final surface prep before finish...joe

[Charles Davis]

Thanks Chuck and Joe for your helpful replies...

I see the logic in the spiral cutterhead as well as better understand the relatively higher cost in that they last significantly longer than knives.

I might have to pull the trigger on one as, like Joe, I'm moving towards focusing on figured material... curly maple, curly cherry, and birdseye maple have recently been added to my rack.

In googling around I believe that I could even upgrade my planer (Dewalt 735) with a spiral cutterhead. That would be nice but I think I'll just do the jointer and run a final pass or two on the jointer after thickness planing to get the best machined surface prior to hand planning.

[Robert Chapman]

I have spiral cutter heads on my Jet jointer and Powermatic planer. They both leave a very slight scallop running the length of the board. These scallops are not easy to see but definetly show up after finishing. You can see them right off the planer/jointer if the light is just right. Sanding is still required. I work with figured maple and really like these heads due to the almost complete absence of tear out.

[Kevin Jaynes]

....Is the spiral cutterhead aimed at more power tool-oritented people that want to go from the jointer/planer to finish sanding?

The points made so far are on point from my experience so I'll not repeat them. As to your question above, spiral cutterheads are aimed at a wider audience IMO. They are aimed at anyone who uses their planer quite a bit, because they stay sharp an order of magnitude longer. They also do minimize tearout, but do not eliminate it in all species in all conditions.

I run a 25" planer with a Byrd type head. When you hear someone use the term "Shelix" or "Byrd", they are referring to the orientation of the inserts (the individual carbide cutters) and the layout of the rows of inserts collectively.

Byrd is the name of the company which came up with this design (as far as I know; stand to be corrected) so Byrd is synonymous with Shelix. Shelix is an amalgamation of several descriptive words and it means Shear, helical, staggered, insert tool. Whew! yes I had to go to the website to look that up. :D

Anyhow, it means the inserts (cutters) are arranged in a spiral pattern around the head, and staggered so they do not enter the wood at the same time. In addition, the inserts themselves are offset at an angle, so that the leading edge (the cutting portion of the insert) does not enter the wood all at once perpendicular to the board.

What all this means is a whole lot QUIETER operation, a smoother overall finish (but not ready *for* a finish) for a longer period of time than what HSS blades can even approach, and several other rarely mentioned benefits such as........

I plane a ton of wood - literally. Sometimes tons a day, again literally! On occassion, I will plane a board with metal in it. When that happens, it breaks one or more inserts, instead of destroying the whole knife or even all the knives. It's a lot easier to change an insert than to buy a new set of knives.

The inserts as well, have four sides. It's like having four inserts in one - because it is! When they start to get dull, it takes me (one of my sons or my wife actually) about an hour to loosen, spin, and tighten the several hundred cutters on the head. But no need to buy a whole round of inserts when they get dull. It's as if you have four free sharpens included in the deal.

Got a little wordy there I guess you can tell I like the Shelix style heads. So as not to be mysterious my head is offered by the company that manufactures my planer - Woodmaster. they do not manufacture the cutterhead themselves in house, but use a local machine shop that does a fantastic job. Point is Woodmaster owners and those considering one in the future (American made BTW) do not have to look for an after market head. The company has them and at extremely reasonable prices.

Not a commercial for Woodmaster and I do not own stock. :D Just like to talk up a good thing when I can. As far as the Byrd cutters they are a great product and a great comapny as well, I have dealt with them in the past and hace nothing but great things to say about them as well.

A picture is worth a thousand words (http://www.byrdtool.com/journals.html) and I think I used about two thousand in this long-winded dissertation.

As a caveat, there has been a minority of users who do not prefer the Shelix type head on jointers, but they are a minority I believe. I do not have one on my jointer so cannot comment on that first-hand.

HTH.

[Danny Burns]

The big plus of using a handplane, besides the superior finish, is the intense lack of noise, which is one of the reasons why handplanes have made a comeback.

[Kevin Jaynes]

That's the truth Danny. Woodworkers who do not take the time to become proficient with hand tools are missing the boat.

[Jeff Duncan]

All I'll add is that usually your better off adding the spiral to the planer than the jointer. Everything I mill gets one face and edge on the jointer then goes through the planer. Going back to the jointer after that would be working backwards and not efficient.
Now if you put one on the planer and then add one to the jointer also, that would be just fine.
BTW had the spiral on a light duty 20" planer which worked well. Have since upgraded to an industrial planer which allows grinding knives on the machine and can say without a doubt the surface left by HSS is better initially on average hardwoods. It just doesn't last as long as the carbide or work as well on the gnarly exotics which I don't really use anyway.

good luck,
JeffD

[Neal Clayton]

the ease in changing knives and the longer life make them worth it, imo. there is nothing less fun or wasteful of time than spending 2 hours+ setting straight knives, only to have them dull a couple-three weeks later and having to do it all over again.

as kevin said, anyone can rotate spiral inserts in about 10 minutes (helper, kids, etc.), and they last about 4x longer from a new edge.

[glenn bradley]

I have a G0490X and consider it quieter, easier feeding and generally smoother than it's knifed predecessor. For the most part I do not hand plane faces that I have jointed on this machine. The normal light sanding or scraping that come with material prep seem to do fine without specifically planing a given surface.

That being said, I do use hand planes and other hand tools for a myriad of tasks and find them indispensable. I do not re-joint a jointed or ripped edge just for the sake of it any more than I use a smoldering stick to drill a hole; I use a drill ;)

Now, do you need a spiral insert head? Of course you do! . . . just kidding. Sharp knives on a properly adjusted machine have shown no difference worth considering in numerous mag reviews. You will have to judge whether you are doing hand planing that could be minimized or eliminated. If the post machining effort is considerable, I would look to minimize it even though I enjoy it, YMMV :)

[Don L Johnson]

Not to hijack the thread, but I noticed someone had a Jet Jointer with the Byrd Head. I looked on the Byrd website and didn't see any after market heads for either the Jet Planer or the Jet Jointer. Did I miss something? Second, for those that have the Jet brand of planer and have retrofitted the Byrd head, are you satisfied? Thanks,

[Kevin Jaynes]

Don,

Byrd makes heads for many machines not listed. If they have drawings they will make a head for it.

At one time they could not make one that had tapered journals, I don't know if that is still the case. Point is, the listed models are only a portion of what they can make.

I know this because I had several models of old American iron I was looking at a couple of years ago and none of them were listed on the site. I called anyway and found out every one of the models on my short list was available from them.