Choosing a thicknesser

[ithium]

Some of you may have seen my other thread (still ongoing) about me setting up a home workshop for hobby purposes. I don't know a lot about grades of wood and such, but I've been learning! Initially I was looking at PAR (planed) wood but I have since discovered that there is such a machine as a "planer/thicknesser" and I have calculated that over time I will save money by buying "sawn" wood and doing the planing/thicknessing myself. Well, that's the general idea anyway!

So I have been looking around for a thicknesser and I have turned to good old eBay. Initially I thought maybe get a second-hand one but I really do not know what I am looking at in this area and so it might be unwise for me to do this. Plus as they are big, heavy machines most people specify pickup only, which will not suit me. I have found a couple of new machines at prices I can afford, but as I really do not know much about this sort of thing I need some help determining whether to go ahead or not!

The three machines I am looking at are:

Ryobi Planer Thicknesser ETP1531AK
1,500W
315mm planing width
5-153mm thicknessing
0-3mm cut depth
10,000rpm no-load speed
10,000 cuts/min
2 knives
8m/min feed rate
£220 delivered

Charnwood Portable 318mm Thicknesser W570
1,500W
330mm planing width
?-153mm thicknessing
0-3mm cut depth
8,000rpm no-load speed
16,000 cuts/min
2 knives
8m/min feed rate
£195 delivered

SIP Thicknesser 01333
1,800W 2.5hp
318mm planing width
?-160mm thicknessing
0-3mm cut depth
8,000rpm no-load speed
16,000 cuts/min
? knives
8m/min feed rate
£225 delivered

In choosing I basically looked for the ones that take the largest size of wood. Although I doubt I will ever use something as large as 30x15xm, I figure it's useful to have the capacity there and the machine should therefore handle smaller sizes with ease...? I have no idea about comparisons of use - all three machines seem to have roughly the same specs for roughly the same prices. I don't know what cuts/min means in any real sense to me, and although I've heard of Ryobi and think they are an okay brand (?) I have not heard of the other two...

In terms of how much use the machine would get, I'd say 100m of wood within the first month and maybe 400m per year. If I have my sums right that means that after one year it would have paid for itself. Although I will mainly be using softwood I'm assuming it will be okay to use it for hardwood as well - or have I got that wrong?

I'm imagining that I simply buy one of these things, set it to the size of wood that I want, and push the wood through. I'm a bit hazy as to how that actually works, but I'm figuring I'll find out when using it - it can't be all that hard can it?!

So basically a summary of what I'm trying to find out here is:
1. Are any of those machines suitable for me
2. Which one would be recommended
3. Are the prices worth going for or should I look elsewhere
4. Can I use it for hardwood as well as softwood
5. Is there anything I'm missing here... is the whole thing a good idea!

And I guess an extra question would be whether it's okay to buy sawn "fifths"-grade wood or not. I'm still confused about the tangible differences *to me* of fifths versus unsorted.

Many thanks!

 

[p111dom]

In terms of how much use the machine would get, I'd say 100m of wood within the first month and maybe 400m per year. If I have my sums right that means that after one year it would have paid for itself. Although I will mainly be using softwood I'm assuming it will be okay to use it for hardwood as well - or have I got that wrong?

What do you mean by 100m? If you mean 100m cubed for say oak that would cost around £120,000 and 400m cubed per year would be touching on half a million quid :shock:

To be fair even boards 6 inches (150mm) wide by 1 inch (25mm) thick for 100m would cost £573 for oak so thats still quite a lot. For 400m that would be around the 2k mark. I would suggest thats that's sufficient to class this as beyond hobby useage and in which case non of the machines above would cope. You would need something like the floor standing Jet thicknesser or a very heavy duty planer thicknesser.

 

[Chems]

I'd just say if I had my time again, I would have bought separate machines rather than a combi. I'm not stuck for space but it wasnt something I really thought through when I bough mine, the machine is fantastic is the Axminster Planer Thicknesser the non-cast iron one and it does a fantastic job. Just the hassle of changing modes is starting to annoy me and getting the dust extraction switched over. It takes about 1 min to do but sometimes you just want to be able to go to another machine.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I'm not stuck for space

I hate you.

But yes, you are right, if you have the space (spit) then separates are a MUCH better option.

S

 

[Chems]

Well I'm using a double garage, and of course cars are banned, thats why ford invented quick clear window screens!

A thicknesser doesnt take much space anyway really.

 

[OPJ]

Dom, I assume he's talking about running or linear metres, probably both hard and softwood?

Looking at the three machines you've identified, first thing to point out is that these are all thicknessers. This means that you feed the work in, the rollers pull it through and they will prepare timber to your desired thickness. Trouble is, this is only one-half of the setup you really need...

You really need to get hold of a half-decent planer as well, often referred to as "surface planers", "jointers" and "surfaces" among other names. This machine requires you to feed it by hand but, this will give you a flat face and true 90º edge which can then be used as reference points in when thicknessing to finished dimensions.

Yes, a thicknesser on its own will "plane" boards. But, it won't flatten or straighten them and your edges certainly won't be true. A planer and thicknesser MUST be used together for accurate work.

It's worth seeking out some advice on the correct ways to operate both machines first though. YouTube could be a good place to start...

If I had to choose between the thicknessers you're looking at, I think the SIP looks a little too cheap in build quality so, for me, it's between the Charnwood and Ryobi.

 

[OPJ]

Okay. I've been comparing the specs. on the Ryobi and Charnwood thicknessers (there really isn't much between them!) and I reckon you should go for the Ryobi. They mention in the description that the bed rises on four pillars - no mention of this in the Charnwood advert (that doesn't mean to say it isn't there though). Also, look at the NVR switches - the Ryobi can easily be switched off using the "emergency stop" button on the front. Charnwood's looks like it still has to be flipped off when something goes wrong.

Then, of course, you'll have to look at getting yourself an extractor to go with it - not a cheap little vacuum either; this'll need a 100mm and airflow of something like... 1,200m3 per hour. :wink:

Do you plan on planing boards any wider than 6"? What about length of your work? The surface planers I linked to would only be suitable for small work, due to the relatively short length of the tables.

 

[maltrout512]

Hobby mmm!! I use wood to make a living and what quantity you say you want to use, that's some work you have there. I spent 1k on a planner thicknesser two months or so ago for one job which it has paid for its self, but it was no where near the quantity not even a 10th your thinking of doing and your looking at £200 machines. Sorry to say this but you have to think in the real world. Working with that amount of timber the machines that you have listed will not handle it.....

 

[Steve Maskery]

I hate to be so trite, but you really do get what you pay for. "Buy cheap buy twice" is the rule. You WILL upgrade, sooner or later, and then you'll wish you'd bought the best first time round.

We've all done it on one machine or another.

S

 

[RogerS]

What makes you think that you actually need one? Given that amount of material, do you really want to stand there and feed it all through the thicknesser (several times) ? Could you not design your projects to make use of available sizes? Just a thought.

 

[ithium]

...okay, I think I've caused some confusion over my figures! I had thought that it would be apparent that I was using a linear measurement - after all, I said 400m per year, not m3 or even m2. I was simply trying to give an estimate of how much wood I would be actually pushing through the machine. E.g. if I bought 20m of 25x200 sawn, I'd be pushing 20m of wood through the machine. Plus, I did mention that this is a hobby, which should have helped determine linear rather than cubic measurements - and if I was using cubic, the machine would pay for itself much sooner than one year

I did also mention that I will mainly be using softwood, and I asked if one of these machines is okay to use with hardwood too, as I will occasionally want to use that. So calculations based on 400m3 of hardwood were not what I had in mind at all. Bizarrely, only OPJ realised this - it seems everyone else got the wrong end of the stick. Sorry fellas!

Anyway, now that I've cleared that one up...

OPJ, thanks for taking the time to figure out what I was prattling on about and look at the specs of the machines I listed. I really appreciate that. However, I'm a bit confused (and still very ignorant!). You mention that I need a planer *as well*... but I thought these machines were planer/thicknessers? I anticipated that they would do both jobs (the Ryobi is referred to as a "planer thicknesser"...). I think I understand what you are describing in terms of planing, but I'm surprised the machines I listed don't do both. So that's a setback for my plans, for sure. I certainly understand and appreciate the need for a straight, true edge - and I was always hazy about how the thicknesser does this. If I now understand this correctly, I should buy two machines (e.g. the Ryobi plus another separate planer), put some sawn timber through the planer, and then put it through the thicknesser. Have I got that right?

Would I be able to use the extractor with my other power tools such as router and saw? I assume I can get one to fit everything...

I intend to work with boards up to around 225mm which is 8 or 9 inches but being able to handle up to a full foot would be useful. In length I am looking at certainly a minimum of 2m.

I'm afraid almost all the other replies concentrated on a misunderstanding of my quantities... however, RogerS, I don't understand what you mean about available sizes. I have been planning to buy in wood of near enough the sizes I need, e.g. 25x200 or something, but buying sawn rather than planed, and saving money by doing the planing and thicknessing myself. Sorry if I did not make that clear initially. As for needing one - well, that's only arisen as an idea because I thought I could save money on wood that way. After all, if I figure I can save around £200 in a year (that should have been a dead give-away as to my quantities! PAR is roughly 50% more than sawn, so it should have been easy to work out that I was looking at £400 worth of sawn timber in a year) then after that year I am saving money - and this is a hobby I expect to be doing for many years, perhaps decades, to come.

Now that I've cleared that up, does that help in determined what is suitable for me...? I'm still very new to this and I really appreciate all advice and tips given.

Many thanks!

 

[RogerS]

.......
. however, RogerS, I don't understand what you mean about available sizes. I have been planning to buy in wood of near enough the sizes I need, e.g. 25x200 or something, but buying sawn rather than planed, ....

In my experience, I've found that sawn timber seems to have different growth characteristics with very wide and coarse grain pattern such that when you stick it through a planer and/or thicknesser the end result is rubbish. This also addresses one of your other questions in the OP, I think?

 

[p111dom]

Sorry ithium didn't mean to be facetious but that fact of the matter is that wood is a three dimensional material that is usually sold and priced per cubic foot. Stating that you intend to run throught 100m doesn't mean a lot. Quantifying your inteded dimensions as 25 (1 inch) by 200 (8 inches) makes thinks more clear but even then 100m of this thickness is around 5.5 cubic feet worth £192.5. That's in hard wood and I know you said soft wood but in my experience there's a bit of a missconception than softwood is less than half the price of hard wood. My local supplier sells oak at £35 pcf and Douglas Fur at £30 so the difference in price to me is minimal.

OPJ is right about that fact that you've only mentioned thicknessers and you havn't addressed the plaining issue. It is possible to do both with just a thicknesser but it's a chew and requires you to make a jig. I certainly wouldn't want to run 400 linear meters per year or 22 cubic feet in your measurements using this method. To compound your problems the phrasiology over here and in the states differs which can confuse things. In the states they call a planer a joiner/jointer. They sometimes refer to a thicknesser as a planer. So if you see an item that says thickness planer it's just a thicknesser and has both names for differing markets. Mostly over here the machine you would be looking for would be a planer thicknesser written in that order. Unfortunatley they tend to be significantly more expensive than the machines you've listed even for basic models (which you wouldn't want). It's often abreviated to pt or P/T if you want to search the forum for threads on them.

You should also consider that while a lot of these machines often state a planing thickness of 3mm or so in reality you rarely take off more than a mm at a time so if you needed to plain 3mm per side that would be 1200 passed per meter a year for 400 linear meters over a plainer and again 1200 passes through the thicknesser which again is why many people were left questioning your hobby usage.

 

[ithium]

In my experience, I've found that sawn timber seems to have different growth characteristics with very wide and coarse grain pattern such that when you stick it through a planer and/or thicknesser the end result is rubbish. This also addresses one of your other questions in the OP, I think?

Hmmm. This worries me! I was of the understanding that when a tree gets cut up, it does so into random-sized pieces that make the best use of the available wood. Those pieces then get sawn into standard sizes, and then some get planed-all-round for those customers that want it. Well, there's some guesswork in there, but that's what I thought happened.

Therefore I thought that buying sawn wood would be the same as buying planed, except that I would be doing the planing and thicknessing instead of the supplier. I mean, if there's a plank there and I can have it as it is, or pay them to plane it, well, it's the same plank, right? So I'm a bit confused about that... as it sounds like you are saying they actually supply different wod for each.

 

[p111dom]

Not really it all depends on the quality of your machinery and your experience in selecting your boards. There are no standard sizes for rough sawn boards just as there are no standard size of tree. My supplier sells single of doubled waney edged boards. (waney edged means the bark is still on one or both edges or the edges are not cut straight.)

When you buy rough sawn timber it can be very difficult to see what you are getting. Here are some boards I bought for a recent project.

Waney edges both sides. These have to be cut off first. Most boards will be 8 feet long but this is a rough figure. You can see that these boards differ in length by 8 inches or so. They also vary in width depending on the width of the tree. The thinnest 8 inches the widest 14.

The problem with plaining is grain direction. When plaining you always go with the grain. You determin this by several ways but mainly it's down to exoerience. If you don't you get chipping which can ruin a board. The problem is that on one board you can have circular or swirly grain patterns which means that the grain runs in one direction for half the board and then flips the other way for the rest. Conseqently one side plane nicely and the other is a mess. You have to choose your boards to account for this cutting them down to lengths to unify the grain as much as possible. I think this is what RodgerS is talking about. It's not different wood but at a saw mill they may have several customers with differing requirements. You mights have a table manufacturer who needs boards planed nicely 8 foot long and a stain maker who only needs boards the width of an average step say 3 feet. The 8 foot lnog boards which chip half way may get cut down to three feet and sold to customers with these requirements.

The end result is a lot of wastage and is why most pros when quoting for a job will over estimate the ammount of wood required by 30 to 50%. Out of these boards I got this.

Some woods also plane better than others. Oak is pretty good but can have mad grain which is difficult to see in rough sawn form. Ash tends to have straighter grain but can be a nightmare for chipping. It also tends to burn easily when routing. Again you'll find all this out with experience which IMO is all part of the fun.

 

[ithium]

Sorry ithium didn't mean to be facetious but that fact of the matter is that wood is a three dimensional material that is usually sold and priced per cubic foot.

No worries - I understand what you thought, but obviously wood is sold in square and linear fashion too. In fact it would not be advisable to try and apply a cubic value to the prices of most softwood planks that I have found, as it seems certain sizes cost more than others. Anyway, seeing as the focus was a planer/thicknesser, which deals with wood in a linear fashion, I simply wanted to give an indication of how much wood I would be feeding through it linearly. Sorry about the confusion.

Stating that you intend to run throught 100m doesn't mean a lot. Quantifying your inteded dimensions as 25 (1 inch) by 200 (8 inches) makes thinks more clear

Well I'm not sure it does - that was purely an example. I'll be using other sizes as well, such as 50x50 and 100x100. Again, it was supposed to clarify the fact that I am talking about a linear measurement, as that's all that matters to this machine, surely! I don't see much difference to the machine between me putting through 50x50 or 75x75 - but there's an obvious volume difference, which is why I would have thought volume would have no meaning here.

but even then 100m of this thickness is around 5.5 cubic feet worth £192.5. That's in hard wood and I know you said soft wood but in my experience there's a bit of a missconception than softwood is less than half the price of hard wood. My local supplier sells oak at £35 pcf and Douglas Fur at £30 so the difference in price to me is minimal.

...maybe the problem is that you are using fur instead of fir! Think of the seals, man! (joking!!!) But seriously, I was worrying that the prices I had found might be expensive. I'm looking at £25/cu ft for oak and redwood for £12/cu ft PAR or £8/cu ft sawn. I know Douglas Fir is a lot more pricey than redwood but I'm not looking to buy Douglas Fir at present. At least your prices reassure me that I'm not going to be paying too much! Anyway, you can see that even if you take 25x200 as an average - which I don't think it is - we're only talking £45. Allowing for different sizes etc. I was anticipating maybe spending £400 per year on cheap redwood pine.

OPJ is right about that fact that you've only mentioned thicknessers and you havn't addressed the plaining issue. It is possible to do both with just a thicknesser but it's a chew and requires you to make a jig. I certainly wouldn't want to run 400 linear meters per year or 22 cubic feet in your measurements using this method.

This is the kind of stuff that I am eager to know!

To compound your problems the phrasiology over here and in the states differs which can confuse things. In the states they call a planer a joiner/jointer. They sometimes refer to a thicknesser as a planer. So if you see an item that says thickness planer it's just a thicknesser and has both names for differing markets. Mostly over here the machine you would be looking for would be a planer thicknesser written in that order. Unfortunatley they tend to be significantly more expensive than the machines you've listed even for basic models (which you wouldn't want). It's often abreviated to pt or P/T if you want to search the forum for threads on them.

Bah - those darn Yanks! I'm glad you warned me about that - I wasn't aware. In light of what you have said, it seems weird that the Ryobi I mentioned is listed as a "planer thicknesser" - in that order? That's part of the reason I had thought it would do the whole job. If you look at my original post you will see I mentioned "planer/thicknesser" but I was certainly not aware that there is such a quagmire to get stuck in, so all of this is very valuable information to me.

You should also consider that while a lot of these machines often state a planing thickness of 3mm or so in reality you rarely take off more than a mm at a time so if you needed to plain 3mm per side that would be 1200 passed per meter a year for 400 linear meters over a plainer and again 1200 passes through the thicknesser which again is why many people were left questioning your hobby usage.

That makes sense. I wasn't expecting to do it in one pass, for sure, but still, 1200 passes per year doesn't seem excessive to me. That's only 100 a month - and how long does that take? It seems these machines go at 10cm/sec so if we say 33m of wood with 3 passes then the machine is only actually in use for less than 6 minutes. Of course, there's also the time taken to get each piece ready to go through etc. but it does not seem unreasonable to assume that I could do this in an hour? Spending one hour every month would therefore cover my 400m per year, and one hour per month certainly seems like hobby usage to me. Maybe I've missed something important but I don't see this as taking very much time.

Now I know that the hour I spend every month doing that will not be worth very much to me in terms of money, but that's not the point. This is purely a hobby, and I don't mind spending that time. Heck, I spend an hour and a half every week just mowing the lawn - and I don't get any money for that! So long as I can put any money I do save against the cost of the machinery, that seems okay to me.

Has that clarified things a little? I'm going to look into planer/thicknesser/jointers etc. a bit more, but thank you very much for your help as it reduces my ignorance bit by bit. I'm finding there's more terminology and details to learn than I originally thought!

 

[ithium]

Not really it all depends on the quality of your machinery and your experience in selecting your boards. There are no standard sizes for rough sawn boards just as there are no standard size of tree.

The problem with plaining is grain direction ... I think this is what RodgerS is talking about.

Again you'll find all this out with experience which IMO is all part of the fun.

Ahhhh... that makes sense. I understand that perfectly! However it has introduced a little bit of confusion again... if a supplier lists "sawn timber" of size 25x200, for example, I was under the impression that I would, upon ordering that, get a piece of wood that is near enough 25x200 in size. However, the finish would be rough, and need planing, and the thickness might vary slightly throughout the piece. This is referring to softwood, as I think with hardwood you mainly just get the boards you have been talking about? Hardwood is an area that I am hoping to get into later on, but at this stage I think my initial projects will all use softwood. So if I see sizes of sawn redwood, I was expecting to get near enough those sizes, and then simply plane then to get a nice finish. Have I grossly misunderstood this? :shock:

And yes, I'm looking forward to the fun - that's the reason for doing it - but I'd rather not make too many mistakes in things like buying equipment and wood, as that's harder to correct than making a mistake when actually working with the wood.

 

[OPJ]

Sounds like you're getting the jist of it now, ithium. #

Extractors are exactly "bread and butter" either... What you need to understand is that there are two types - High Volume Low Pressure and High Pressure Low Volume.

The HVLP machines, generally a twin-bag machine with the filter above the collection bag, are suitable for sucking up large particles and chippings - planers, thicknessers, spindle moulders and router tables. You cannot normally use these with pipes less than 100mm diameter so, you cannot use them with power tools, you loose most of the airflow and suction.

HPLV extractors sound like vacuums (noisy) but can be reduced for working with power tools and machines that produce fine sawdust - bandsaws, table saws, sanders, etc. Some manufacturers claim you can use these with planer thicknessers but, they fill up very fast even when they can shift the waste without the pipe becoming blocked.

Back to the planer-thicknesser discussion...

If you're looking to plane 9" wide boards up to 2m long then the planers I showed you just won't do. You may be better off going for a planer and thicknesser in the same machine, which will give you a 10" width of cut on both parts and a maximum thicknessing depth (board thickness) of 6", sometimes 7". I'm sure Fox used to do an 8" wide surface planer, about 1500mm long but, I can't find it anywhere?

This is the machine that I own and, along with several other owners on this forum, I highly recommend it. You get lot of machine and reliability for your money, in my opinion. The downside to this kind of machine is that you have to change between planing and thicknessing modes.

 

[p111dom]

...maybe the problem is that you are using fur instead of fir!

Damn that U key next to the I. I also tend to hit the S key alot when I meant to hit D. More practice required at typing I think.

The liner issue isn't just the about the dimensions. A machine while having a 12 inch capacity may only be able to take off 1 or aven 1/2 a mm over that width where as on a 50mm wide board in soft wood could probably take off the full 3mm. Again these measuements are all important to determine what level of machine you would need. As for thicknessing with only a thicknesser try this.

Watch from 9 min of "The Jointer Jumpin" Episode 6. This whole series is excellent and IMO better than New Yankee Workshop.

http://thewoodwhisperer.com/

 

[ithium]

OPJ, p111dom:

I have just rung TransTools who sell the Ryobi that I mentioned in my initial post. The guy I spoke to was insistant that the Ryobi machine is a planer and thicknesser - he said it does the whole job and will produce flat, square results :? He was adamant that I don't need a planer as well - in fact the initial question I asked him was can he recommend a planer to go with that thicknesser. So now I'm confused again (I seem to be making a habit of that!). The name and description does say planer as well as thicknesser, and the chap said it can be used for both... bah! However the planers you linked me to seem to have a long fence, and this doesn't... I can easily make a fence if needed... help!