An Old Combo

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John Whitley
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An Old Combo

Tue Sep 22, 2015 2:29 pm

To play off Chris' recent A New Combo post, here's a combo that seems far more plausible in practice: the Wadkin over/under patternmaker's jointer-planer.

Wadkin RM 26" over under jointer demo (video)

The video's a touch long, but has a nice walkthrough of this machine and some discussion of its restoration. From skimming through the video, the over/under setup here seems nicer than many of the modern convertible jointer/planer combos. If the ideal of the combo machine is two machines in the same space, but as convenient to use as separates, this hits closer to the mark than most I've seen.
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Chris Hall
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Re: An Old Combo

Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:59 pm

Yeah, i'm familiar with that machine and have read Jack's rebuild.

The stumble-down point for me with that particular over/under is there is no chip collection. The planer will just spray chips everywhere. After you use the jointer, the planer tables will be covered with chips and have to be swept off before use. That would get old after a while I think.

Wadkin made good equipment, but I think there are better designs out there for jointer/planer combo machines.
John Whitley
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Re: An Old Combo

Tue Sep 22, 2015 7:43 pm

I think there are better designs out there for jointer/planer combo machines.
Agreed; I should have qualified that in my original post. Modern machines, combo or not, have design in many ways since this Wadkin. And one of the "advantages" of this over/under design is really just an artifact of it's sheer size: in many modern combo machines, there's a need to move the jointer beds out of the way since they tend to be a lot longer than the planer's overall depth. The Wadkin certainly has its own significant tradeoffs in practice. Still, I find it an interesting point in the design space, if mostly from a historical perspective.
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Re: An Old Combo

Tue Sep 22, 2015 9:09 pm

If you're looking at jointer planer combos, Germany produced various models:

Baeurle:
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Loewer:
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Weinig:
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Chris Hall
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Re: An Old Combo

Tue Sep 22, 2015 10:15 pm

The other thing about that Wadkin jointer/planer model I don't care for, and something it shares with a lot of older American planers, is that the motor sticks way out to the side. Takes up a lot of room. It's too bad they couldn't have tucked the motor under the frame somewhere like you see in a lot of the german designs.
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Re: An Old Combo

Mon Sep 28, 2015 2:12 pm

Thanks for the pointers, Chris. For now, I'm slowly doing footwork and considering options, so no big rush.
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Re: An Old Combo

Tue Sep 29, 2015 10:03 am

Having had a combo machine before (Felder) and used a Japanese combo planer jointer, my thought is that of the two main types of jointer/planer machine, the side-by-side type offers certain advantages (chip collection, not having to worry about losing previous settings with the planer when changing between functions), however side by side always means a wider machine than the over/under type of machine. If space is at an absolute premium, then the over/under type would be the route to take.

But if a wider envelope is okay, then one could also look at nesting a separate jointer with a separate planer in the same arrangement - -at least with Martin, where they are designed to nest back to back and offset:
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Of course, that isn't going to be an option for too many people given the sky-high cost.

My current flow between jointer (outfeed) and planer (infeed) involves taking three steps and turning the lumber 90˚ to the left, so it's not too bad.

It's good to have an arrangement of jointer and planer, whether a combo machine or not, that gives a good workflow between operations. Jointing and then maybe a turn left or right to reorient the material, and into the planer it goes, in a smooth flow. It's almost invariably the case that a job that goes over the jointer goes over the planer next. For that, it is far less convenient is a machine where you have to flip tables up, put a dust collection plenum in position, and so forth, to go between functions.

The problem with any machine in which the planer table height is changed when converting the machine back to jointing mode, is that sometimes in a process you have an unfortunate incident in which a stick gets damaged in some phase of fabrication, and you need an extra stick. That means jointing a fresh piece of lumber, but that also means in changing to jointing mode the thickness setting of all the other material run previous is lost (i.e., the sticks you are working with at the time), so you run the risk of having a new part which is slightly out of dimension with the others of its kind. There are workarounds to that of course, but I think design-wise it is at the bottom of my list at least.

My shop is getting cramped for space, but I don't have any inclination to return to a combined jointer/planer machine to ease the situation. Instead, I have built my space around the jointer and planer. I use them in every task with solid wood.

If you can, having separate machines is best in a lot of respects, both for workflow and for having options in terms of how you position the machines relative to one another.
John Whitley
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Re: An Old Combo

Wed Sep 30, 2015 2:28 pm

The problem with any machine in which the planer table height is changed when converting the machine back to jointing mode, is that sometimes in a process you have an unfortunate incident in which a stick gets damaged in some phase of fabrication, and you need an extra stick.
Yeah, been there, done that. I'm likewise wary of jointer/planer combo setups for just those reasons.

For now, I'm very pleased with the co-op shop that I'm working out of. There are always tradeoffs, but the social and learning benefits of the other shop members and the massive cost benefits of the shared equipment pool hugely outweigh any downsides currently. That's why I'm not in any great urgency yet. I filled the one big gap for my needs in the shop, which was having a good drill press. I changed co-ops a while back, but the router table situation is still unfortunate, or maybe just tragic. The best table in the shop has a Milwaukee router in Jess-Em lift, which are great. These is let down by a table with an MDF top that's become quite warped, cupping upward. That makes it impossible to work on even moderately long stock. :-/
John Whitley
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Re: An Old Combo

Sat Jul 01, 2017 7:40 pm

I wrote:
Yeah, been there, done that. I'm likewise wary of jointer/planer combo setups for just those reasons.

Ironically, a used Felder Format 4 Dual 51 jointer/planer combo has recently shown up in my area, which has me giving serious thought to a combo unit. I briefly toyed around with the idea of a many-way sliding saw combo, mentioned over in my shop-building thread , but have discarded that as impractical for many reasons. However, this particular machine has its appeal.

The design of this unit appears to preserve the planer height setting when changing modes, at least, but still comes with the workflow downsides of a combination machine. I’m not 100% clear how rearranging the dust collection port would work in practice in my low-ceilinged shop; I don’t have the luxury of a high-ceiling hung flexible duct which makes this setup more obvious.

Some advantages, which seem really stereotypical of combo machine discussions now that I’ve written them down:
  • I would get a lot more machine (20” cutting width, and Format 4’s build quality, bells & whistles) than I would get with the lower-end new/refurb separates I’ve been pricing out. Better still, this used unit would be cheaper.
  • Another appeal: The internal floorspace of my shop is 660 sq. ft.. Not tiny, but far from voluminous. I haven’t done the due-diligence of a workflow floorplan yet, but the space savings are tempting.
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Chris Hall
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Re: An Old Combo

Sat Jul 01, 2017 8:54 pm

The other issue with combo J/P units is that in most designs, the jointer fence is affixed to one end of a jointer table, and this fence is invariably aluminum, so it flexes more than a little at the very location where you want it to be rigid as all get-out: at the cutter.

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