Carbide Planer Blades For WR Cedar?

[Joe Wood]

I get all my wr cedar rough and then plane it down. We check carefully by eye for staples and then have at it but within 20' of surfacing there's a nick in the knives, and then more and I'm getting tied of changing knives! It's not staples but something like road grit which we can't spot as easily.

I've heard carbide knives aren't as sharp as HS steel. Will they still do a good job on the soft cedar and will they hold up to the road grit, and maybe staples??

[Joe Wood]

Jeez never mind I asked the same question Jan 2016 ..
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....-Planer-Knives

[Martin Wasner]

Jeez never mind I asked the same question Jan 2016 ..
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....-Planer-Knives

That's freaking awesome.

[Mark Bolton]

Not to mention there is no knife that will deal with staple and remain unscathed

[Lee Schierer]

Where are you getting 20' boards of wr cedar that also have embedded road grit. Is this recycled material? Perhaps you should consider getting a large dual belt sanding station to run it through first.

[Joe Wood]

No this is straight from the mill in Vancouver Island. I have no idea how the road grit gets on it. I'm the west coast and have a few suppliers I order from. I never get tired working this stuff :-)

[Andrew Hughes]

I found some WRC to have a high silica esp the good stuff. It does also pick up stuff easy we have to be very careful where we stack.
That stuff looks very good Joe.

[brent stanley]

I was going to say, it could be silica streaks here and there that are doing them in on you. In which case I have found that higher quality HSS will in fact withstand those better. Hit and miss as to whether or not carbide would chip or withstand it. Even without that, cedar is going to be hard on knives. You're really into territory where a segmented insert head really shines.

B

[Joe Wood]

How do you know of the silica content Andrew, what do you notice in the timber?

What are these silica streaks Brent?

[Andrew Hughes]

Tried to hand plane some WRC that was very dark brown and it just ripped the edge right off my blade.
Ive also connected the high silica with great outdoor use.
One year I had a good run making fancy gates.$$

[Wayne Lomman]

Just use carbide blades. I don't get how anyone can do more than 5 minutes work with HSS and still have an edge especially in a production environment. The argument over carbide not being as sharp is academic. Carbide stays sharp for a good length of time. WRC is soft but you can machine it for months on carbide blades with no tooling changes. The change will cut your costs. Cheers

[Mel Fulks]

Wayne, I have never seen a new planer that had real high speed steel knives. All were low grade "semi high speed". Have you tried M2, or T1 ?

[Wayne Lomman]

Mel, I agree that OEM planer blades are rarely worthwhile. However, I have never in all my working life in several shops had to put up with HSS because it simply does not perform all day every day like carbide does. HSS is not cost effective. There is too much down time for servicing and too much dimensional drift as the tooling loses its edge. It has not mattered what timber I have worked with which includes most of the species discussed on this site plus all the Australian hardwoods and imported mahogany.

I recommend to everyone to use carbide machine tools for their long life and how they retain sharpness between servicing. This improves machining accuracy as it reduces re-calibrating tooling after honing as you need to do with HSS.

I know Australia has way more abrasive timbers than many places but carbide tools are still worthwhile for WRC as the OP is dealing with. Any tooling is destroyed by staples and large rocks etc but carbide will handle the dust and dirt that destroys HSS.

Hand tools are an entirely different matter however.

Cheers

[Mel Fulks]

Well, Your place has some famously tough woods. I've had good results with the better steels.

[Andrew Hughes]

This is a reason why I like to have knives in my jointer. Because I can choose my steel to suit my needs if I were facing carts full of beautiful cedar like joe shared I would seriously consider carbide tipped knives.
Most of what I work with does fine with m2 and t1. Plus I don’t mind changing knives out when I start seeing dust of feed pressure go up.
My days of buying exotic wood from the Amazon jungle of Africa are done not interested anymore. Plus I’ve become sensitive to dust or oils from many exotics. So my road is narrow, but have accepted air dried wood from neighborhood is plenty satisfying.
Good luck Joe.