24" planers

[Rick Fisher]

How big is your jointer? You really don't need a planar any wider than your Jointer. I use curved cauls for my glue ups and never need to send panels into a planer a second time.

The more industrial planers have segmented in-feed rollers and segmented chip breakers. You can run multiple boards through at a time without issue.

[David Kumm]

Don't know the specific machine, but there is a 24" Panhans on Woodweb.com. Panhans is Martin quality stuff. Dave

[Mark Gibney]

Well I got myself a 24" planer for $2,000. It's a 3-phase Casadei R 63 H3, made in 1994. It's in pretty good shape but for one little problem with the bed raising / lowering. I'll post a thread about that.

The people who sold it to me deal in electronics, and got it along with a bunch of stuff from a studio of some sort in Hollywood. They didn't want it hanging around so I was happy to help them out!

Thanks for all your feedback.

[Larry Edgerton]

Awesome Mark!

Aren't you glad you stopped in to let us talk you into a more expensive planer?

What head does it have?

Larry

[Mark Gibney]

It has straight knives. More than that I don't know. We'll be getting to know each other over the coming weeks...

[Peter Quinn]

Congrats and good deal. I worked with the spiral head version of that planer for about 10'years. After about 1million BF went through it they rebuilt the top end once....I'm not kidding about the approx board footage. It's a great solid work horse, beats the heck out of the Asian imports. They sell new for around $18k. At that price you could easily justify the $4-5k for a new spiral head, or get a terminus head made, or Tersa. Enjoy it and good luck with the height isue, IIR the most likely thing wrong with the table drive is fairly easy to fix.

[Erik Manchester]

Congrats Mark, once you get that table elevation issue sorted you will have a great unit.

I picked up a Wadkin Bursgreen T630 planer last year and it had only been used from 1985-90 in a commercial setting and then was sold at auction and the buyer sat it in a corner of his garage for 25 years before he decided to sell it. He had plans to use it but when exploring the cost of 3 phase 600v power he never got around to it.

I put a new set of bearings in it and gave it a good cleaning and it it works like a charm. I found the elevation unit on mine was quite dirty and very stiff to turn, but once all the old grease was washed off and it was re-lubed it worked fine, however the coil on the starter for the 1/3 hp elevation drive was fried. As soon as I replaced the coil it worked perfectly.

Those big planers can really hog off the wood for initial dimensioning and the DC needs to be appropriately matched as they generate a lot of chips.

[Mark Gibney]

Thanks Eric - I'm working on my DC today.

Peter - what is IIR? thanks.

[Peter Quinn]

Thanks Eric - I'm working on my DC today.

Peter - what is IIR? thanks.

IIR=If I recall...memory gets fuzzy as time passes. I remember a little skinny drive belt, a big split pulley, some sort of tensioner. When it worked, which for us was most of the time, it worked great for coarse adjustments, you could drop the table inches in under 30 seconds. We had this funky spiral head that held curved one piece HSS knives that were just around 1/16" thick....like 24" long arched disposable razor blades. And the jib was curved. You had to tap the knives in while going around the curve, almost never happened without some blood loss, probably the worst knife change I ever dealt with. With fresh inserts it was hands down the smoothest most tear out free finish I've ever seen. Even with dull knives it was pretty decent, but those skinny knives chipped real easy and grooves developed pretty quick. Everything went through the wide belt right after the planer, I didn't like coping rail parts that rock and rolled on the bumps the planer left. Its such a productive machine, love to see one with an insert spiral head!

[lou sansone]

I have a casadei r63 24” planer and have put thousands of bd feet through it. They are built like tanks and it has never given me any problem