Looking at Jointers and thicknessers

[Yxoc]

Can anyone tell me if the following two are-

a. A quality brand

b. A good price

c. Easy to find parts for to service/maintain

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/-/111285753884
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/-/111285753723

Cheers

Derek

[Chris Hall]

SAC is a decent Italian brand, on a par with Griggio, Casolin, Casadei and SCM. Probably owned by SCM. Quality seems on a par with those brands, and i imagine the price of parts also. I believe they are still in business, but I have no idea how far back they carry parts. It might be instructive if you locate the parts supplier in Australia for SAC and give them a call and ask about the availability of spare parts fo a machine which is 20 years old or older. Things like knives, belts, bearings. That's about all that wears out on a jointer. Well, the table raise lowered mechanism can wear and get slop, leading to the infeed drooping slightly over time, but good machines have adjustment capability built in for that.

Looking at the SAC jointer, i was struck by the ad on Ebay - why on earth would it be in the category of 'soldering irons'?!:

soldering irons.jpg (329.74 KiB) Viewed 3690 times

Then I was struck by the wooden fence - I'm suspicious, especially since the fence tilt mechanism is still there. What happened to the fence? It must have gotten bent or broken, as it is not something easy to lose or remove from the tilt mechanism. If the fence took some sort of damage making it unusable, then what sort of damage might the rest of the machine have taken? Was it dropped off the back of a truck? The color scheme was pretty ghastly, but that's minor. I think I'd pass on that one.

The Griggio planer - the major strike against it, in my view, is that the table is raising only on a central hydraulic cylinder, without the added vertical gibs on the front and rear to help stabilize. I feel that is a poor design, one easily stressed and distorted by feeding a longer timber through the machine without full support. Also an ugly paint scheme, and the presence of homemade metal brackets here and there - though the dust hood looks good - leads me to wonder just how bad the shape of the machine was before the paint got slopped on. It's also on the small side at 350mm capacity - 500mm would be better. I'd pass on that one too.

I'm not sure which machines come with the more desirable 4-post, 4-corner table support, but the SCM does. Martin too, of course, but no point going there. I picked up a used 630mm SCM planer with Tersa head last year for $5500, which was a bit of a steal. Not sure what your budget is, but if you can find a 500mm SCM planer with Tersa for around $4500 that would be a good choice. Oh - what power do you have at your shop? That's a consideration too. A 500mm planer should run at least 6 horsepower. Maybe I'm suggesting machines that aren't practical for your situation - if so, my apologies.

A lot of machinery sellers will take a beat-up-looking machine and slap fresh paint on it - with 'slap' being the operative word. The machine looks newish as a result but in reality is just as worn out as before. That's an incredibly common practice and a bit of a warning flag. If they will supply pictures of the complete rebuild, along with pictures of freshly ground tops, and so forth, that would be another matter.

[Chris Hall]

I've long thought that it's really too bad that no manufacturer seems to make a well-designed and constructed small (200 mm) jointer.

I mean, by 'well-designed':

-4-post table support
-4 point table support
-1.25~1.5m infeed with 1m outfeed
-Tersa head, 3- or 4-knife
-slotted table lips
-the fence attached to the machine frame, not the outfeed table, and riding along without contacting the outfeed table. It should be easy to adjust and tilt. An Aigner jointer fence is perfect for this...
-greaseable cutterblock bearings
-around 4hp would be ideal

The 'serious' machines are invariably 500mm or larger, while the typical 200mm machine is made for the hobby user and is a more 'disposable' design. It seems like there is a gap in the market there, but maybe I'm hallucinating.

[Yxoc]

Chris,
Thanks for your thoughtful observations.

Good pickup on the wooden fence. I had just assumed that it was surface rust on metal that gave the brown look on the fence. It wasn't till I looked at the enlarged photos that the wood grain became apparent.

I am studying the market at the moment, not much quality stuff comes up often in Australia. I am an amateur woodworker and my needs are only to cover the carpentry work we do here plus furniture that I would like to make for myself/family. I think that a jointer, thicknesser and band saw would be the three items that would satisfy most of my needs and still see enough use to justify purchase. We are in the market for a house and my workspace for will be a shed at best but most likely a double car garage sized area, so footprint is also a big concern - hence my earlier interest in combo jointer thicknessers. Once you add in dust extraction...

Budget wise - that's a hard one, first step is finding what things cost but I fully expect I will need to find a good deal on a second hand item to fulfil my desires for size and quality.

A big limitation so far is that I don't know much about machinery but I am slowly educating myself. I have looked at these portable thicknessers on the web - I believe you have one for on site work? Would they be an acceptable compromise to get oneself started?

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Makita-2012N ... 3d9&_uhb=1

Thanks

Derek

[john verge]

I have run quite a bit of material through both the dewalt thickness planer and the makita also. I believe both were 12" planers. It seems to me that lots of sharp blades on hand keep these portable units running well. Also the dewalt had a triple knife system which used reverseable blades. I also recall the dewalts cutter head adjustment was quite accurate and responsive. Thats about all i can offer. Good luck! John

[Chris Hall]

I wrote a bit about Dewalt portable planers a few years back on the CW blog:

http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.com/201 ... n-get.html

There are some aftermarket blade options for the Dewalt which are better than the factory offering.

I've been happy with the Makita 2012, though you do need to get the chip collection hood. I also bought the factory stand. The Dealt 735 has a blower built in so you can spray chips into a plastic bag. Really though, if you're going to run a planer indoors, you need a dust collector.

[Yxoc]

Gents, thanks for your comments.

I re-read that CW blog entry. Seems the Dewalt model has potential problems, sounds like maybe the Makita is the way to go for portable planers/thicknessers.

Any purchase is at least a few months off for me yet anyway.

[Chris Hall]

I've used both Dewalt planers, the 12.5" and the 13". Both worked well except for the knife issue. The larger Dewalt is the heaviest in the class, pushing the boundary of what might be called 'portable' at 95lbs (what's that, about 40kg.?).

I don't think the 2-knife vs. 3-knife thing amounts to much with these planers. They are high rpm, and I find the finish off of the Makita 2012 with 2-knife head quite nice.

I think you should be aware as well that these little planers are somewhat limited in 'oomph', and when the board gets towards the wider side, the stock removal rate drops down, especially if the knives are at all dull. A 25mm wide stick can have 3mm taken off in a pass, while a 250mm wide stick might push the planer to take 0.5mm off.

If portability is not part of the equation for you, I would suggest moving up to a 15" planer with three-knife head and 240v. electrical. Most of what you'll find is coming out of Taiwan or China, but Makita and Hitachi do have machines.

[Yxoc]

Portability is certainly not an issue and I don't expect it to become one in the near term. I would presume the Taiwanese manufactured stuff is preferable to the Chinese? Isn't Jet a Taiwanese brand.

I notice that a local company called Carbatec is now stocking Powermatic machines - I think back to one of your blog posts where you describe the American manufactured machines as not having changed or innovated in the last 30 odd years. Well these look like something that might fit in that category. As a benchmark - their 15" thicknesser retails for AU$4200 and their 8" jointer is AU$4000.

It seems that decent Japanese machinery doesn't make it here - quick google searches on both Makita and Hitachi only come up with hand tools and the portable thicknessers.

[Chris Hall]

From what I gather, Australian import duties make a lot of products prohibitively expensive there- do you find the same? Mind you, wages are also pretty decent, no?