A Rockwell / Delta Uniplane can produce very good results.

[Bob Blarneystone]

Hello, I recently acquired a Rockwell Uniplane (Model 22-300) from a guy who is moving away. This machine was intended as a safer variant of a 6" jointer, and when it is used correctly I believe it is much safer. I didn't find much useful information about it on web other than the manual and pics at OWWM, but I did find some strong opinions. Some remembered it and liked it, some got extremely frustrated and sold or junked it. After cleaning it up and adjusting it, I've decided that this machine can produce excellent results, and with small pieces of gnarly wood. The key to success is a proper setup, which is not so difficult if one follows the instructions and pays attention to things that the manual takes for granted as common knowledge.

Below is a picture of the machine, which looks like a delicatessen meatslicer. However, instead of a blade, it has a cutterhead with 8 cutters that turns clockwise. They are made from 1/4" machine-lathe bit stock, and four are ground as rough cutters, and four are ground for finish cutters. They are installed alternately in marked holes. The rough cutters are set to shear away at the wood first, and then the finish cutters clean up. The cutters project only a very small amount from the fixed left fence: 0.003" for the rough cutters, and 0.005" for the finish cutters.

There are three fences. The fixed fence is on the left. The center fence is adjustable but is fixed for operation, and is set 0.002-0.005" inwards relative to the fixed fence. The right fence is the 'infeed' fence and is adjustable to 1/8" depth of cut (however I would never go beyond 1/32-1/16" in a single pass). The adjustment knob is on the lower right of the base, and the major tick marks are 1/64" and the minor ticks are 1/3 of 1/64" (about 0.005").

I will post more pics and explain more later.

[david brum]

That's fascinating. It would be great to see a video clip of the machine in action.

[David Wong]

Can the uniplane be used on end grain?

[Bob Blarneystone]

David, it can cut at any angle of grain orientation: with, against, oblique, or end. It would be very useful for woodturners who like to do complex glue-ups. Look up the work of Max Krimmel for impressive examples.

[Josh Bowman]

Bob,
I used one of those at Northern Michigan University, 33 years ago. It worked great, but as I remember they will no hog. Very precise and safe.....I guess......I remove 1/128" from the end of my finger with one. If that had been a conventional jointer, I'd done more damage to myself. My other issue is the blade exposure is right where you can get your hand into it. Keep that guard in place. Again it does a great job, you'll enjoy it....I think it's fairly quite also.

[Bob Blarneystone]

Josh, exactly so, about not hogging off a lot of wood in one pass (after using it for a week or so, now I rarely take more than 1/32"), and about the safety issue. I was going to get to the guard-and-safety issues later, but here's a few observations.

The original guard was made from acrylic (plexiglass) and they almost always cracked at the ends of the slots. Some operators repaired them, others replaced them, and others stupidly threw it away (this would be very scary). I replaced my cracked-and-patched acrylic guard with one made of polycarbonate, which is far more crack-resistant (crack-proof?). I reinforced the bottom edge and made it bigger, thus giving it more area at the critical slot ends. I also put on fender washers with nylock wingnuts that can be adjusted to give an easy sliding action or a fixed height. I would like to counterweight it so that it wouldn't slam back down at the end of a pass.

The other thing that could make for a dangerous situation, is the ease and precision of use, that might lull an operator into complacency. One should always be mindful with any power tool. It should not take much more than firm finger-tip pressure to operate it, but on small and thin pieces I'd use a clamp or caul.

[Bob Blarneystone]

Please bear with me, this is my first thread here and so I haven't figured out all of the details and etiquette of posting and replying and maintaining a logical sequence.

In this picture, you see the cutterhead, and screwed onto the fence is the factory-supplied gauge-block that is used to set the cutters. You can see here that the rough cutters are triangular, and the finish cutters are hook-shaped. These are the original HSS cutters, and I touched them up with a pink Al-Ox stone in a drillpress, while holding the cutter in vise set to the proper angle. I didn't try too hard to get them perfect, because I thought I might buy a new set. They're available on the internet for $120/set, but I found a local shop that will make new ones from 8-10% cobalt alloy steel for $70 and these would last much longer. I don't know if carbide cutters would do better because I think that the grinding angles might be important.

At first, I was concerned that I couldn't sharpen or reset the cutters but it wasn't so bad. While resetting them, I noticed that while torquing down the setscrew that a cutter might shift in or out a tiny bit. I think that this creeping might cause great frustration if this isn't (wasn't) noticed by new users.

[Bob Blarneystone]

Here's a pic of a knot in walnut, and the endgrain of a cherry scrap with a 0.002 feeler gauge blade taped on so that you have a visual reference by the shadow of the blade's edge. The tearout in the cherry endgrain was from a previous roughing pass, and if I kept passing the piece eventually the tearout would be gone.

Also, since the woodfibers are shorn by the cutters instead of abraded, there is no dust packed into the pores. I wonder how a new, honed set of cutters would work.

[Bob Blarneystone]

In reviewing some more information from the internet, it seems that many people think that replacing or sharpening the cutters is difficult and expensive. I really don't see it that way.

As I mentioned above, there are HSS cutters available on the web for $120/set, and I've found a local shop that will make cobalt steel cutters for $70. It might not be a bad idea to buy new ones if the old ones are really beat, but I bought an 8" length of HSS 1/4" bit stock for $8. Each cutter is 3/4-1" long overall, and so with an 8" length I could grind a set by myself with a couple of jigs. However, I do plan to buy the cobalt allloy cutters, to be sure that they're correct for the first major use.

As for honing the cutters, I plan to make a fixture that holds them at the correct angles so that I can use the 'scary-sharp' silicon carbide paper method. I can easily make a fixture that would index in the uniplane's miter slot and paste the paper on the table or just lay a plate glass sheet on the table for the paper. The amount of metal that would need to be removed is very small, and so it wouldn't take much time to do all eight cutters, almost certainly less than an hour if I first set the grinding up for microbeveling.

[al ladd]

I had one for awhile. I paid alot of money for one back around 1990, before Craigslist and ebay made those sort of things much easier to find. I made lots of small end grain panelled boxes back then, and thought the uniplane would be just the thing for surfacing the pattern blocks beween resaw cuts on the bandsaw. I found the steel knives got dull quickly cutting endgrain (and my laminated blocks also had many gluelines, and vey hard woods like purpleheart and wenge). I had a sharpener make me a set of carbide knives and they held up much better. But when I got a wide belt sander I found it was much quicker and easier to simply sand the panels. I was thrilled to get about 3/4 of my money back when I sold it...
Oh, and whoever said they thought they're quiet isn't right about the one I had. I think it' was a major downfall of the machine. It sounded like a shaper with a giant cutter, and it really got on my nerves. For just about anything they can do I'll take a good joiner with a Byrd head anyday.... Shelix heads are fantastic on endgrain. But Uniplanes are cool! If I had a huge shop ,and was single, I'd have one...

[Bob Blarneystone]

Thanks for the insights, al.

At this point, I have a $100 into it, plus time and a quart of paint, so it's not been too painful. I don't think I'll retire my jointer yet, but this thing can do some fine work that the jointer can't.

It does sound like a jet winding up, but it doesn't seem excessively noisy to me. I did make silicone rubber vibration dampeners for both the machine (orange) to base (blue), and the base (blue) to cabinet (yellow). I also put on rubber washers to help isolate the cabinet access panel and shroud too. It does need a new belt, and I think a machined steel pulley would be much better than the cheap cast one that's now on the motor. Finally, I think that I will fix this to the floor as recommended by Rockwell, and there's enough room inside the cabinet for a dustcollector (a Dust-Deputy maybe).

Do you remember if you had the shop grind the carbide cutters to the same shape/specifications as the HSS?

[al ladd]

Yup, I gave him samples to copy. He was a second generation grinder in Worcester MA,- don't even remember his name, but he did gone work very reasonably. I think carbide knives were an option from Rockwell when they were in full swing with uniplanes. Since you got by with so little into your setup, and it sounds like its not used for production work, you're proably just as well sticking with what you got.

[Dave Mura]

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

[Bruce Page]

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

+1
I have heard of the Uniplane but this is the first time I've seen one. Thanks!

[Bob Blarneystone]

I did a test of planing ability by first ripping a 18" x 3-1/2" x 1/4" strip off a 2x4. Then I steadily planed it down to ~0.050", using 4x4 caul of maple to back it up. There was no drama at all.

I think it would be possible to plane wider stock with this machine as well, using a sled that indexes in the miter gauge slot. I have in mind a folding wedge design, about 6" high x 20-24" long with a taper from somewhere about 1:4 to 1:8 to allow fine adjustments for thickness. I was thinking of making a wide vacuum clamp plate to hold the stock on the sled's fenceboard. By turning the vacuum plate (with the stock still clamped) end for end with the same face to the cutters, then I could plane up to 11-12" wide stock (in theory!).