Quiet Dust collectors?

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Brian
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:21 pm

Thanks for your thoughts on this topic!

I'm happy to skip the helical head, as they're plenty expensive which means that they're even further away in time. Excellent points about rotating single cutters, and likely the reason why people complain of lines left in the surface. Also good point in that I don't really want to devote 1/2 day to rotating cutters any time one of them gets a nick.

Tearout had not been much of a concern to me until recently. I have a local shop thickness batches for me on projects that I don't have time to thickness myself, such as when building art frames. I had a batch of AYC sawn up and ready for the thickness planer, basically straight grained stuff with a few mild grain reversals. It came back with every reversal, even the mildest, torn like crazy. It sort of raised an eyebrow for me, the same planer had behaved fairly well on plenty of other stock like cherry and walnut. I had thought that maybe it was simply dull knives and there isn't much to worry about.

Do you run Yellow Cedar, Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar without tearout issues?
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john verge
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:04 pm

I have an older Makita table top thickness planer running two knives in the cutter head. My experience with yellow cedar/Douglas fir/and western red cedar has been tear out free and generally very forgiving woods, even when planing them in the flat sawn orientation.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:15 pm

Brian wrote: Do you run Yellow Cedar, Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar without tearout issues?
Well, having worked curly bubinga, curly shedua, Cocobolo and the like fairly extensively in recent years, softwoods, while not without their challenges, seem now a relative walk in the park.

I've never had significant problems with Yellow Cedar or Western Red as far as tear out goes. Doug Fir can be problematic, the coastal stuff more so than the Rocky Mountain stuff. With Doug Fir, the alternating early wood/late wood layers, which have significant densities from one another, can wreak havoc. The problems are less an issue the higher the moisture content of the wood, and when employing rotary cutting with a power planer as opposed to hand planing. Flatsawn dry Doug Fir can be difficult to plane by hand without tear out. I saw a guy at Eastwind throw his plane across the shop once in frustration with trying to plane Doug Fir.

Western Red cedar is easy to work but tough to hand plane to an even sheen, and tough to pare cleanly without crushing fibers. It doesn't get as glossy as the Yellow Cedar. Probably not the best choice for any kind of framing with joinery, though it can certainly be done....

I find the biggest challenge when working with softwoods is avoiding denting and scratching the material during both construction and installation.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:19 pm

john verge wrote:I have an older Makita table top thickness planer running two knives in the cutter head. My experience with yellow cedar/Douglas fir/and western red cedar has been tear out free and generally very forgiving woods, even when planing them in the flat sawn orientation.
I have the same planer and it does a great job. The high rpm's make up for the lack of knives.

One advantage of a 4-knife Tersa head is that you can insert dummy knives in two of the slots and run as a 2-knife head. for a lot of materials, this is plenty sufficient and saves on knife costs. However, if returning to 4-knife set up, you need to have all 4 knives at the same relative wear, or you'll end up with the least dull knives taking all the wear.
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Brian
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:09 am

john verge wrote:I have an older Makita table top thickness planer running two knives in the cutter head. My experience with yellow cedar/Douglas fir/and western red cedar has been tear out free and generally very forgiving woods, even when planing them in the flat sawn orientation.
Interesting, It must have been a fluke and probably was due to dull knives. Which is odd as YC usually planes well until my hand planes are quite dull.
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Brian
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:24 am

Chris Hall wrote:
Brian wrote: Do you run Yellow Cedar, Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar without tearout issues?
Well, having worked curly bubinga, curly shedua, Cocobolo and the like fairly extensively in recent years, softwoods, while not without their challenges, seem now a relative walk in the park.

I've never had significant problems with Yellow Cedar or Western Red as far as tear out goes. Doug Fir can be problematic, the coastal stuff more so than the Rocky Mountain stuff. With Doug Fir, the alternating early wood/late wood layers, which have significant densities from one another, can wreak havoc. The problems are less an issue the higher the moisture content of the wood, and when employing rotary cutting with a power planer as opposed to hand planing. Flatsawn dry Doug Fir can be difficult to plane by hand without tear out. I saw a guy at Eastwind throw his plane across the shop once in frustration with trying to plane Doug Fir.

Western Red cedar is easy to work but tough to hand plane to an even sheen, and tough to pare cleanly without crushing fibers. It doesn't get as glossy as the Yellow Cedar. Probably not the best choice for any kind of framing with joinery, though it can certainly be done....

I find the biggest challenge when working with softwoods is avoiding denting and scratching the material during both construction and installation.
I'll stick with the Teresa then, and just plan on adding carbide knives to it.

Hah, I'm sure that throwing the kanna did not fix the tear out! I've had good luck with WRC, YC, and Doug Fir with handplanes. I had some issues with WRC but taking a slightly heavier shaving solved them.

It does crush really easily, I built a box for my son's blocks yesterday evening after my real work was done. I used WRC and noticed that paring between the tenons made for a lot of crushing of the fibers.

Hah, I have an iron at the ready for odd dents.
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Chris Pyle
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Thu Sep 28, 2017 12:25 am

Brian, how are you liking your bandsaw? I thought you had a dedicated thread for it so it took some searching to find this.
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Brian
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Re: Quiet Dust collectors?

Thu Sep 28, 2017 12:39 am

Love it, I resaw endlessly and it doesn't miss a beat.

I've sawed 19" white oak, 15" Goncalo, no problem.

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