Planer Blades - Are Tungsten Carbide Worth The Extra Cost?

[Andy's Shed]

The blades in my Scheppach HMS 260 seem to have taken a bit of a beating after my recent attempts at planing some rough finished oak that I'd been given (that's another story), so much so that the wood can noticeably bounce while passing over the cutters. After a closer look I can see that the blades have dulled, I can also say with some certainty that the previous owner has most likely already re-sharpened them and they're not quite as even as they ought to be.

I've been looking online for some new blades and although the majority of them are HSS, I've seen mention of Tungsten Carbide tipped blades too. The TC variety are more expensive and I'm wondering if they're really worth the extra expense?

 

[Ollie78]

Hss are fine, less brittle and can be sharpened. When I had a Scheppach I got mine from either woodford tooling or appleby woodturnings.
Best to get about 3 sets total. One in the machine one spare and one for sharpenning.
Grinding used to cost me £6 a set so less than half the price of a new set.

Ollie

 

[scholar]

I bought some TC knives for my big planer over 5 years ago - OK I am an intermittent user, but I only just switched the knives around a few weeks ago! They were still cutting ok, but they had slightly dulled, most noticeable on planing rather than thicknessing.

My planer takes 410mm Centrofix (double-sided) blades and I just looked up the details from 2017 - the HSS blades were approximately £20 each, whereas the TC blades were £100 each. I don't like to think what the current prices would be.

I got these from Doug at Cutting Solutions who was excellent to deal with. Doug advised me that the TC would provide many more times usage than the HSS, certainly more than 5 times more - I think this has been borne out by my experience.

Doug did stipulate that the usage expectation was subject to to working clean timbers only (I guess because TC can be more brittle). In all that usage, I only very recently experienced one little nick in the blades that started to produce a tiny telltale ridge on the planned surface.

Changing the knives or switching them around on my machine is a cinch anyway, but it has been great not to have to change blades for such a long time.

In my case, I think I justified the TC knives purchase - I still have a stock of HSS knives, so will revert to those when I have worn out the second side of the TC knives in another five years….

Cheers

 

[Andy's Shed]

Thanks both, much appreciated.