Anyone ever seen a jointer / planer like this before?

[Phil Thien]

Back in the 70's, before I could afford some kind of thickness planer, I bought one of those Inca thicknessing "contraptions" and adapted it to work on my Rockwell Delta 8 inch jointer. It wasn''t difficult to do, but I can't say I thought much of the planing results I got with it. Being hand fed and gravity taking its toll, it was difficult to get smooth even cuts. It used a spring to hold the work up against the plate, with pressure being controlled by adjusting the height of the infeed table. For long heavy boards it was more or less useless.

I got the idea from James Krenov's books which showed his jointer with a thicknessing attachment. I had also seen one in a British woodworking magazine in the early 70's; apparently they were quite common in Europe. I have also seen plans for something similar but shop-built in an old woodworking book on the web, but I dis-remember where.

I think the idea has merit for occasional thicknessing - especially with a powered infeed roller like the one in the youtube video - but not for extensive milling of rough stock. I used mine occasionally for getting a parallel thickness after first sawing to thickness on the bandsaw; I wasn't removing much material. I still have the attachment, but haven't used it in about 30 years.

Jim

He who welds steel with flaming pine cones may accomplish anything!

I had the same one. And I thought that while it worked well, it was rather difficult to feed stock through the thing. Longer stock was easier than shorter stock because it was easier to get an advantage on the stock.

I ultimately sold it and got a Dewalt DW734 planer, figuring I'd use a sled with the thing. My thought was I was going to need to consolidate my shop due to a problem we were having at the storefront I rent (non woodworking business). The planer could be made easily portable so it would help out in that regard.

Ultimately, the DW734 planer and sled worked very well, but I did stumble upon a Ryobi JP155 jointer. This is a tiny 6" benchtop model, made in Japan. Don't confuse it with today's benchtop jointers, these were made 20 years ago and have an amazingly well thought-out fence and they're just crazy good. They still make them though I believe production moved to China at some point (I'm not positive on that, though). They still sell them with the Ryobi label in Japan, though, but they don't export them to the US. Ryobi-Japan tools (cordless tools, etc.) are still produced, you just can't normally get them here. They're very fine tools, though.

So anyway the little benchtop jointer comes in very handy for smaller pieces. Anything over 6" wide or very long gets the planer sled.

Now that I've had discreet machines, I don't think I'd go back to a combination machine. I time to switch functions back/forth is just too much for me.

[Peter Kelly]

550 seems like a decent deal. Could just use it in jointer mode and buy a separate planer later on.

[Dennis Aspö]

I have a smaller 8" combo jointer/planer of the brand emco, it's a hobby machine, but it fits my shop much better. Someday I'd like something a little larger but I can wait for the perfect deal to pop up.

I asked the guy here with the KEV and he said his planer works OK, but the last 15cm tend to have .3mm of snipe, he said it joints better than almost any other machine he has used in compensation, and the shaper is invaluable. Still my little emco has no snipe that I can detect, either on the planer or jointer. Used to get snipe on the jointer but adjusting the blades fixed that.

[Michael Weber]

Watch one on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S_SfnC...ature=youtu.be