Mark Singer - About Your Isreali router bits

[Howard Rosenberg]

not driving on Saturday....

depends on how you define the eruv.

But seriously.... did you get these particular cutters from Lee Valley?

I'm curious because a colleague on our synagogue's house committee publishes a "Shop Israel" newsletter and I'd think he'd be interested in THIS news.

Thank you.

Howard

[Peter Pedisich]

Howard,

I have Amana router bits and saw blades and Timberline bits (a lower-end version by Amana) made in Israel.

Pete

[Howard Rosenberg]

didn't realize Amana is an Israeli brand.

Oh, how I envy you Americans - such selection!

Howard

[Norman Hitt]

I have the Amana NOVA system bits with all the inserts for "both styles", (edge work and plunge work), and they are really nice, (the ones I've used so far).

[Mark Singer]

Its a little late I just had a nice dinner with friends....the Israeli bits are very good...they are good with steel , carbide, weapons, and latkis...speaking of ...Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is a celebration of the victory of the Maccabees and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple. It also commemorates the miracle of the oil that burned for 8 days...vy sholn't vodvoerkers from Talahassee know a bissel about our holiday

PS ...Michael Hurwitz is on the cover of Woodwork this month....its about time, no?

[Mark Singer]

Howard,
Here is the whole story...I think he did the right thing with the name...Einstein brings in many things ....e=mc2....the speed of light and potato knishes...

http://www.woodworkersjournal.com/ez.../interview.cfm

I am very sure they are using Shmaltz on the bearings....vat could be betta?

[Dev Emch]

Just for the record. Isreal has a very established arms industry that produces military hardware for both internal use as well as external sale. This managed to tick off a few other countries including the US with the end result being that certain machine tools, namely, cutter heads, were placed on the export ban list. So to resolve this, Isreal began building up an internal carbide cutter business. Today, Isreal produces a massive amount of carbide cutting hardware which is used internally as well as exported. Most of this is used in the machine tools industry. These are the CNC machine centers and CNC turning centers.

I make my own woodworking tools in addition to restoring older tools. For example, its easy for me to fabricate a new four knife or helical carbide cutter head for any jointer or planer, etc. I use an extensive collection of ISCAR tooling on my milling machines and metal lathes. Most of this stuff uses insert tooling which I actually love more than the older HSS tooling. I can take a 30 or 40 thousandths cut without coolant and remove red hot chips as I hog down to final diameter. ISCAR is an Isrealli company as are many of these companies. The quality is awsome.

So the extension into woodworking tooling is only natural. Making router bits is child's play when your good at making high performance, carbide insert tooling for the high speed CNC machines such as the Gene Haas and Hardinge machines.

Now when it comes to insert cutter based shaper tooling for the woodshaper, nobody beats the german company Leitz. But if you need raw carbide for brazing tips onto tooling, then you need to check out the german company Tigra. They sell the blanks which must then be silver soldered onto the cutter head and then profile ground.

[Steve Stube]

I would say routers were in pretty wide use by DIY's and shops in the early 60's. Maybe that was only in my part of the world - who would guess. Under powered was the complaint offered up by the operator as an excuess for the "burn" streak. If I had more power, I could move along faster and not burn. It required technique/touch in balancing RPM to the rate of material removal. Often you had a choice of either making a light finish pass or spending time cleaning up the burn OR sometimes starting over altogether. It did seem another 10 years to break out of the 1 HP handhelds. I find it an interesting couple of threads even if my memory doesn't agree with story line of the author in the link.

[tod evans]

there is a company named "zahn" who makes the plates for sawblades. wisconson knife used to use them but got away from the "consumer grade" tooling. it appears as though amana has picked up zahn as a vendor for their plates,at least a portion of them. they are easy to identify by the copper plugs in the expansion slot and the fact that they are heavy, these are really good blades if cut quality is important to you because they don`t flex like a thin kerf blade. .02 tod

[Michael Gabbay]

Come kinderlachins PaPa Mark is going to tell us the story of Hanukkah and how the Maccabees make router bits!