• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Planer Thicknesser Knives advice please

T

tony.w

New Shoots
Joined
Jul 7, 2024
Messages
83
Reaction score
11
Name
tony
LOCATION
shrops
I bought a used Mini Max FS31 rebuilt and set up and i'm very impressed with it (abeit its heavy to move about on wheels on a cushioned floor), I would like to either replace or sharpen the knives. The Knives are 310mm long 20mm width and 3.2mm thick i have found Axminster APPT310 HSS blades on ebay which for £37 for 3 didn't seem bad however they are 3mm rather than 3.2mm and not sure the blade retainer will make up the difference.

Last or one of the owners left a etched date and some other wording almost 20 years ago

I have the manual but its not much use to be fair but it does quote 000605065 as a part number for them


20250118_135204.jpg
 
If your planer is like mine, you screw machine screws through the block and the knife/ blade/ iron into a backing plate, which clamps the knife tight against the back (as it rotates) edge of the slot in the block. There is always a small gap between the backing plate and the other side of the slot in the block, and it won't make any difference if this gap is 0.2mm wide than previously.

If you have diamond plates it is pretty easy to sharpen your own knives. I haven't paid for mine to be ground for 5 years or more, I reckon.
 
Trevanion said:
Sounds more like an Imperial knife, which would surprise me on Minimax as the European stuff is usually Metric but they do also sell them in the USA so perhaps more aimed for that market. In that case, it would be 12 1/4" x 1" x 1/8" which is a common size.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/282534186005
Click to expand...
No sorry, SCM Minimax stuff over here is all metric.
I would try a Diamond plate as Mike said. Not much different to sharpening a plane blade really, but leave in the mc to do it.
Ian
 
3mm or 3.2mm will make no difference.
What does make a difference is the quality of the grind. Not just the bevel, but the back of the knife. A sharp edge has to have 2 flat edges, not just one.
I have a couple of sets of knives from a well-known UK supplier. They are mediocre, not because of the quality of the steel, but because of the quality of the face grind.
However, with a couple of jigs, it is easy to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. I do it like this:


Last week, my friend Bob was helping me to pass a rather large beam (200mm x 200mm x 1.5m) over my P/T. He accidentally leant on the blade guard and all hell broke loose. No blood, fortunately. But the guard was a mess which I have had to beat back into shape and the knives need rather more than a tickle. Fortunately I've found a sharpening service only about half an hour away, so I shall give them a try.
 
Thankyou for the very informative information i would love to sharpen what i have but my wife was expecting at least one new window by now so i think i will look to machine shop to get them done or as 0.2 shouldn't be a issue i will purchase a new set of three blades.
Thanks again everyone for your comments
 
I used to take my planer blades to a saw service in Horsford (Norwich UK) but they came back concave and burnt the saw blades I had sharpened there also came back untrue so I decided to have a go at sharpening my own planer blades.

I just put an angled piece of wood on my bench grinder and guide the planer knives by eye. I lightly move the knives from side to side to side checking them with a flat bar to make sure I am keeping them true.
PICT3563.JPG

The wheel is quite fine and wide which helps when running the knives past.
PICT3566.JPG

Very simple but so long as you only take light passes and check on a regular basis you can't go wrong.

PICT3565.JPG

A close up of the finished knife and no it's not burnt at the end it's just the lighting.


PICT3569.JPG

And the finished knife from a distance.
PICT3570.JPG


You can buy diamond coated wheels as in the picture below. The one below is a 120 grit which is a bit coarse. I purchased the dimond wheel so I could sharpen some tungsten cutters I have (I need a less course wheel though).


PICT3567.JPG

The only reason I sharpen my own knives is due to the poor experience I had with the saw service and it works out quicker time wise to sharpen them myself than taking them to be sharpened. It takes me about one hour to sharpen three knives.
 
That 0.2mm difference won’t matter at all — I’ve run knives like that without issue. Just make sure the back is flat and the bevel is sharp. Sharpening with diamond plates works great if you’re careful.
 
For years, I've send my P/T blades away to be sharpened in Havant at Spindex and the 'turn around' is less than a week. At one time there used to be a collection and delivery service to your front door, but alas no longer.

I would never, ever, under any circumstances sharpen my own blades! These things rotate at 11,000 rpm and of necessity need to be absolutely identical. If you tinker with them, there's a real danger that they won't be! IMO, this is one job that you need to let a competent sharpening firm handle - Rob
 
Woodbloke said:
For years, I've send my P/T blades away to be sharpened in Havant at Spindex and the 'turn around' is less than a week. At one time there used to be a collection and delivery service to your front door, but alas no longer.

I would never, ever, under any circumstances sharpen my own blades! These things rotate at 11,000 rpm and of necessity need to be absolutely identical. If you tinker with them, there's a real danger that they won't be! IMO, this is one job that you need to let a competent sharpening firm handle - Rob
Click to expand...
I can't agree with you, home sharpening is an essential skill whether its a chisel or a planer blade, rubbing a planer blade on some wet and dry isn't going to remove a significant amount of steel, so won't affect the balance of your machine.
The mass of the machine compared to the mass of the blades makes them insignificant.

Pete
 
Pete Maddex said:
I can't agree with you, home sharpening is an essential skill whether its a chisel or a planer blade, rubbing a planer blade on some wet and dry isn't going to remove a significant amount of steel, so won't affect the balance of your machine.
The mass of the machine compared to the mass of the blades makes them insignificant.

Pete
Click to expand...
For me Pete, it's not worth the risk. Over time and quite a few sharpenings my guess is that the mass of each blade sharpened at home may start to vary and whilst it may not affect the overall balance of the planer, the bearings of the planer block are going to wear quite a lot more than they normally would do, bearing in mind they're spinning at 10,000 revs + which is why I'm quite happy to pay a pro to sharpen them - Rob
 
10,000 revs? It was 11,00 revs before.

I still think it’s never going to be a problem.
I have a spare set of blades hand sharpened and ready to go.

Pete
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top