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[Greggy1964]

I have a bunch of oak planking stock for my Master Hand sailing trawler build that I cut using my table saw.

I cut it thicker than needed to allow for roughness caused by the saw blade. but this leaves me with roughly 90 linear metres of planking stuff and planing it by hand was looking like a tough job

So I got to thinking . . . . . .  

I have a hand held Bosch power planer and I was wondering if I could convert it to a planer thicknesser so that I could feed my planking material through it to get the desired thickness.

What I have come up with works quite well provided the planks have parallel faces to begin with.

The planer is clamped upside down to my workmate supported in a plywood jig that holds it securely in place, a lump of softwood (tumbler support) is clamped all across the length of the sole.

The none adjustable sole plate is held to the machine by four wood screw type fixings and it was a simple job to get hold of some longer screws to replace the short ones and I can clamp the tumbler support direct to the machine with the sole plate.

To the side of the tumbler support are fixed my two weighted tumblers, they support about 6 kg's of weights each and gives a nice firm feel and hold the planks tight to the sole for planing.

These tumblers are fixed one before and one after the rotating blades in such a way that my pink wiggly bits on the ends of my wrists connot come into contact with the blades which makes it idiot proof which is good for me!  but the tumblers are allowed to moved upwards and rock forwards and backwards.

The idea being that a plank fed through the planer will be held to the sole while planing is done and all I do is feed a plank in one end and pull it out the other in one smooth movement.

Once the blades on the planer drum are set up and the adjustable sole is dialled in properly getting the right thickness is easy. I just shave off half the required thickness reduction off of each face one pass for each face.

A 70" long plank takes about 40 seconds in one pass which ain't too bad and it saves me a heap of donkey work which can only be good.

I just clamp my ear defenders to my ears and off I go making sure the neighbours are not at home!

[cadman17_36]

You have given me an idea that i may be able to use I have a hand held belt sander and I was think i mite be able to use it as a thickness sander i just need to figure out how to not shoot the planks out the other side lol

[Greggy1964]

Hello Cadman17 36

Sounds like a good idea, I would be interested in your findings.

I too am mulling over an idea of making a planer thicknesser from a hand held router turned upside down.

With an aluminium angle iron fence bolted to the sole plate either side of a 12.5mm diameter x 30mm 2 bladed parallel sided cutter, this will give me a face with which to feed the planks into the cutter.

I have a whole bunch of 26mm x 8mm x 10mm bore ball race bearings left over from a land yacht project. I'm planning on stacking them in 3's and bolting them to the face plate opposite the fence. The ones before the blades will be spring loaded to allow for varying thickness of planks and the ones after the blade will be adjustable but be able to be fixed at the desired finished plank thickness.

This way the planks are fed through the machine and held in place to give an accurate planed plank thickness.

The planer idea works but I'm only dealing with planks at best 30mm wide and only 1/3rd of the blades are actually cutting.  My oak planks are hard and blunt the blades quickly. At £15.00 a pair for replacements and a whole heap of planks too plane down it might prove costly!

The router idea will be better as the whole of the blades will be in use and replacement cutters are conciderably cheaper

[cadman17_36]

Hi Greggy

 Sounds like you have a plan Mine will have to wait till spring as we are starting the cold season around here. As for the cutters getting dull quickly have you looked into using spiral cutters like they use for laminate counter tops also you may want to look into mounting the router so that you can adjust the cutting depth so that you can use the hole cutter. If you have a sketch if your plan and would like another pair of eyes to look at them let me know.

good luck

Steve (aka cadman17_36)