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The main wood I was attempting to thickness was a piece of figured Grenadillo. It could just be that species or even that specific piece itself. I believe it may have quite a of bit of interlocking and changing grain direction. I have an old #5 that I put a cambered iron in. For other woods it works a treat. I can hog off wood really quickly and then proceed to my smoothing plane. The Grenadillo would tear out no matter which direction I planed from. Just a nightmare. I also have a couple pieces of rosewood I could try, but I was worried about taking chunks out of that as well. It's hard to get solid practice without ruining the little bit of nice wood I do have! Thanks again for taking the time to offer advice.

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Mark Dillon \\ Dillon Instruments :::====( o || )

Thank you for the tip. I'll certainly take a look

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Mark Dillon \\ Dillon Instruments :::====( o || )

"The Grenadillo would tear out no matter which direction I planed from. Just a nightmare."

If the wood won't plane with a finely sharpened hand plane , then I wouldn't run it through a planer. Especially if it is expensive wood. If you are careful it is possible to thickness plates with a beltsander and scrapers. It's not the easiest way to go and requires careful measuring to get - moderately - uniform thicknesses. If you can find a local custom cabinet shop they will probably have at least a small drum sander (if not a wide belt) and could thickness the (joined) plates.
If you are going to work with "figured" woods then a sander is a better bet.

Never bought from Hibdon?

I have several back and side sets from Hibdon and all of them together aren’t $600 bit, none of them are ABW either

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

I have bought a few. They are beautiful, but a serious mess to work with.

How about this? Why would you want to submit ANY tonewood to the vagaries of high speed, spinning, scrapping metal? The only safe way I could imagine this was if I carpet taped it down to a sacrificial board. and pray the board does not get sacrificed.

Hi Mike,
I have used a planer with good results on most soundboard woods and back and side sets that are relatively straight grained. The small planers can get you "close" quickly and avoid some clogged belts when thicknessing oily woods. They also produce less dust than a drum sander.
No, I have never bought from Hibdon that I can recall, but looking at their website they appear to have many moderately priced sets and a few that are expensive. Quite honestly, I don't think spending more on materials than I do, would get me a better guitar than the ones I am using.

I think this whole discussion comes down to affordability/availability. Any big box store gonna have a planer. But u won’t find a drum sander. And a good drum sander gonna cost more than a lunch box planer. The dewalts and rigids etc are good planers. I have the DW735. But they will not outperform a good drum sander in this application. Especiallly safety wise where snipe comes into play. New builders need to understand this (the risks). IMHO, number one tool for guitar builders is a drum sander. First power tool I bought.

Let's not loose sight of the OP's question - "Planer w/Shelix Head for Thicknessing"

Who here has a Shelix or has used one?

I do & there is no comparison to a straight knife planer in my experience.

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

Kevin, have you thinned back and sides with it?

Kevin mentioned in his initial post he had thicknessed back and sides with his shelix equipped 16 inch planer using a carrier board with some degree of success.

"Who here has a Shelix or has used one?"

I've used a 20 inch planer with a shelix cutter head. They are better than regular knives. Would I recommend buying a deWalt bench top planer and equipping it with a shelix head. No. I don't think the shelix head would improve the function of the planer enough to justify the cost. The cost of the planer and cutter head is getting you in the ball park of a small (16/32) drum sander.
Again, benchtop planers have less tendency to let the work be pulled into the cutterhead, and with sharp blades can produce a nice finished surface. But again, if you can't plane it with a hand plane without getting tearout, then you can't expect to use a planer and not get tearout.

I appreciate all the input and the effort to bring things back around to my original question. I enjoy the various points of view.



Now for an honest question, because I am a relatively young guy and 100% open to a change of mindset. Is the above quoted statement patently true? The mechanics of a hand plane and the speed at which it is presented to the wood seems like it would give rise to a few additional causes of tearout when compared directly to a shelix cutter head.

First, the wider cutting iron of a hand plane. Looks like the carbide inserts for the shelix heads are a little over .5" wide. That is a far smaller edge pushing pushing through the wood at one time versus the 2" wide plane iron. In my mind, the the wider the shaving the more difficult it is going to be for the wood fibers to fight against the tearout of their “next door neighbors”. Shelix head planers would create a bunch tiny .5" wide shavings versus the potentially 2" wide shavings of a hand plane iron. To lean on my goofy “neighborhood” analogy a bit more: a larger, straight plane iron would be like an entire block of little wood fiber “houses” being ripped out at once. A shelix head would be like ripping out a handful of wood fiber “houses” on block #1 and then ripping out different houses on block #2. Again, could be very wrong here.

Second, and possibly most important: the speed of the cutting itself. If the shelix head planer can take 50 separate and individual cuts for every inch of wood that passes through it that seems like it has the potential to avoid tearout more than a slowly operated hand plane could.

Again, I am 100% open to being wrong. These are just the types of questions that come up in my mind. Wish I had someone near me with a shelix head. I could send a few pieces through and let the results speak for themselves.

Also: a couple points of clarity. I'm not arguing a shelix head will yield better results than a drum sander—I'm just wondering if it is possible to use it as a halfway decent stand in until I can afford to buy both tools. Also, I'm not referring helical cutter heads, but specifically to the Byrd shelix heads. I lean toward the Byrd models because they claim to shear off the wood as opposed to the others that tend to make cuts perpendicular to the grain.

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Mark Dillon \\ Dillon Instruments :::====( o || )

The one thing you need to remember Mark is the "if" factor. The shelix head planer works very well for what it's intended but there is certainly a gamble any time your run figured woods through a planer, even with a helical cutter. So, looking over the long term, if you only have a planer and want to work figured woods, when will the cost associated with the planer blowing out some nice figured wood that you payed good money for factor in? I've wrecked a few sets of sides from bending misshapes and it can get expensive replacing wood to keep working that's for sure.

I've been building now since 2003, I've not had the need for a planer at all. A jointer yes. I made my first drum sander and now have a commercial drum sander. Also dust collection should be used for any tool you're using to dimension your wood. So, even if you got a planer, you'll still need a dust collector (you'll still get particulate in the air from a planer).

Only you can determine if you'll use a planer more than a sander... Again, although I have access to a planer from a friend, I've never found the need for it, probably because I use my drum sander for all the planning jobs...

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Mark--

I think your above post is focused on the wrong question. You want to focus on the question of whether a Byrd Shelix cutter is superior to other cutters for planers. But that's not the only relevant factor you should be considering.

The used planer you referenced in your original post is only a foot wide, right? I think your are being optimistic if you think that joining thicknessed plates is easy. It isn't. Why? Because they are bloody thin, and thin plates are hard to get to line up just right all along the seam. We join the plates, then thickness them, for a reason. Can you do it the way you want to do it? Sure, but then the plates are even thinner, because you have to even out that center seam after the halves are glued together. This is a PITA, and this particular PITA is why just about everybody joins the plates, then thicknesses them.

How much is this used planer going to cost? A new planer of that type is, what, $400? And the Byrd Shelix for it is another $400? That's $800 new. So, are you going to get it for about $400 used? This is $400 you will be spending on a calculated risk; you are gambling that the planer will work. Remember that Kevin Looker's setup is with a very old, very heavy, very wide, planer. You are talking about something different. You could be gambling $400 on something that could fail miserably for the task in question. And then there is the cost of the wood you will be experimenting on. If you spent that $400 on a used Jet 10-20 and a modest dust collector setup, you would be investing in something that is proven to work for a lot of folks here on the OLF. I think that would be a pretty safe investment. The planer sounds like a risky investment to me.

You sound like you really, really want this planer idea to work. OK; go see if it will work. I often say that good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. If this gamble works out for you, you can come and brag about how we were all wrong to warn you off of this idea. If it doesn't work, you can put it in the "good judgment earned the hard way" category.

@Rod & Don: Both very well said! I can certainly see how using the wrong tool for the job could quickly cost big $$$ in ruined wood. Even ruining 1 or 2 average sets would still set me back $150-$200. I can't afford to be destroying perfectly good sets of wood because I feel like experimenting based a on whim. You're also right that it's very easy to idealize the situation in my mind—the fact is the reality of working within tight tolerances needed for building guitars is unlikely to match up with the ideal outcome I have in my head.

How about this: I have a new lead on a used drum sander I can probably buy for about $400. I've visited the gentleman selling it and it seems to be in great shape, but it's only 12" wide. Specifically it's this model: https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzl ... nder/G0459

I could put my $400 toward that or I could try and wait a bit longer and pickup something like this model that would allow me to thickness the plates once they are already joined: https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzl ... eed/G0458Z

What direction would you go? Thanks again all.

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Mark Dillon \\ Dillon Instruments :::====( o || )

Wait for the big one.

New username, same Pat Mac

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Pat

If you have the space for it, the larger drum sander would be my choice. I think you'll be happier with it in the long run. I have a 16" Jet and I wish it was a 22 when sanding joined plates or oily sides. Larger is better for the plates to minimize the number of passes and for sides it can help to angle them a bit on the first few passes. A 16" wide sander doesn't give a lot of room to put them through at an angle.

I'll say the same thing I always say when the planer question comes up (although I don't have a Shelix). I used to put wood through on a sled. The plates were double stick taped to the sled with carpet tape and there was a small catch across the back of the sled to support the wood. I had a piece of zebrawood that came out as splinters and a few literally stuck in the dry wall. It was like a couple porcupines in there going at it. It was exciting though!

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A larger sander will require a bigger dust collector (higher CFM).

Any closed sander like the first one you posted will not allow you to run top/back plates through after they’ve been joined.

Look for a used Jet 10/20 open ended drum sander. They work very well and don’t require a large dust collector, in fact a good shop vac with a mini dust deputy would be all you need for it.
The 10/20 I believe still allows a 3-1/2” opening so you can still run some very thick pieces through it.

Looking at your profile (not stalking, honest) you're in MN, home of Jim Olson. It might be worth a day trip to his shop to ask him some questions and see if he'd sand some wood for you...


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Mark--

Grizzly is an OK company for a number of tools, but I do not recommend either of those sanders for which you posted links. The small one is pillow-blocked on both sides of the drum. That prevents you from running joined plates through it. Refer to my above-mentioned PITA problem. The larger one is cantilevered, which allows the sanding of wider plates, but not all cantilevered sanders are built well. That particular Grizzly design is a knock-off of the Delta 18" sander, which some people have had bad experiences with.

I earlier recommended a used Jet 10/20, if you can find one. However, I give a higher recommendation to a wider sander, like an 18" or 19" wide cantilevered model. The virtue of the Jet 10/20 (I used to own one) is that it works well and it is not super expensive. Its big downside is that, in order to run joined guitar plates through it, you have to scootch the outboard end up a few thousandths so that you don't get a big ridge in the middle of your guitar top from the edge of the sandpaper. People do it (I used to do it), but if you can use a bigger sander and avoid that nuisance, I think it is a good idea. A used Jet, Performax, or Supermax sander of the right size is what I would recommend. I currently use a pretty old pre-Jet Performax ShopPro 25. It is pillow-blocked on both ends of the drum, but the drum is wide enough for any guitar part I want to send through. I bought it for a great price, and it is now one of my most prized tools. Snoop around on Craigslist, eBay, etc. Driving a few hours for a good used tool is well worth the effort.

I'd like to clarify that I've had mostly success.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then here's a video I made of a thin piece of high figure Koa on a carrier board and my planer.

Edit:
I typically don't use the planer for super high figure and expensive woods like this Koa. This was only a demonstration. Other pieces of Koa I've tried have had bad results.
My point is that if you are only thicknessing tops & straight grain backs & sides, I feel the Shelix is a realistic option but like everything, YMMV. End of edit.

https://youtu.be/K5gIdpriI3Y

And here's a still shot of the wood with some naptha on it.

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I'm not a luthier.
I'm just a guy who builds guitars in his basement.
It's better than playing golf.

The Grizzly drum sander is somewhat controversial in the the platen moves up and down, not the drum. But for the life of me, I can’t recall what the issue was. It could be thickness stability.

where's the drool emoji!

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

"Generosity is always different in the eye of the person who didn't receive anything, but who wanted some." Waddy Thomson

That is pretty darn impressive. Thanks for the video, Kevin. That wood comes out beautiful and it's nice to know I'm not completely alone with this idea! Haha. Still may pickup a planer first depending on what used tools pop up in my area. We shall see

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Mark Dillon \\ Dillon Instruments :::====( o || )

Keven, very nice. I note u said “mostly”, care to expand on that?