Official Luthiers Forum!

I finally got tired of getting tearout on figured woods with my Dewalt 735 planer. Whenever
a side/back set had any type of complex figure, I'd be risking destroying it if I used the planer
to help take the majority of the excess thickness off. And using the drum sander took a
long time, plus the expense of using up the sandpaper, and/or burning the wood, especially
on oily woods. So I bit the bullet and bought the Shelix sprial cutterhead. I've not used it
a lot yet, but it has worked wonderfully on some ribbon mahogany that had tearout with
the regular cutter, and also worked well on some high-figure Koa sides. So I'm a convert
and recommend the Shelix highly. It's relatively espensive compared to replacing the 3 original
HHS cutters, but the results so far indicate it'll save money in the long run, plus each of the
individual carbide cutters has 4 sides.

I also found that to get down to 0.125" or lower final thickness, I needed to modify a couple
of the guides on the Dewalt. If anybody is interested, I can take some pics to show what
needed modification.

_________________
Gene

Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason- Mark Twain

I've got a Shelix head also - can't say enough good things about it.

For super thin I get good results with a carrier board and a few little pieces of double stick tape.

I'm not sure what the roller/chipbreaker/cutterhead setup is on the Dewalt, but on my planer, the biggest danger of planing thin stock is having the cutterhead lift the leading edge because the wood flexes which will turn your board into mulch.

Kevin Looker

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

That sounds vaguely familiar...

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

The sound is what you'll never forget.

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

I've heard rumors that some helix heads leave a not so great looking board face... any truth to that? Anyone have detailed pictures of freshly planed boards?

Sometimes you'll see little lines or ridges that easily sand off.

As I see it, it's a lot easier to sand off little ridges that are proud of the surface than it is to "fix" tearout by sanding or scraping the surrounding area down to the depth of the affected area.

Kevin Looker

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

I recently looked at a lot of posts on this subject in various woodworking forums. In summary, the collective wisdom seems to be that the Grizzly heads are as good as the Shelix but the knock-offs should be avoided. I now have a Grizzly planer and a Grizzly jointer, both with Grizzly spiral cutterheads, and both perform very well. The planer can take sides and tops nearly to final thickness (with a piece of plastic-coated fiberboard on the bed as a spacer) but I do leave a bit for a finish run through the thickness sander because I like to have them sanded with 220.

I've had mine for 4 years & am a full time cabinet maker & have not yet rotated the cutters. I agree with Todd, the lines you see are .oo1 or less.
I recently planed a lot of pommele bubinga & it was perfection personified,prrrr......
MM

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Mike McNerney

Has anyone used the accu-head on their dewalt 735 that is sold on ebay for $250 ?

Saltytri is that one that you feel should be avoided?

Far be it from me to make that judgment. I'd do some googling around and see what actual users think.

The pictures of the Accu-Head products on their web site (where they misspell their own name) show that the heads are sparsely populated with cutting inserts. The Griz 15" cutterhead has 74 inserts. Also, one user comment I found says that the cutter inserts are only 2-sided while the industry standard is 4-sided. As in most other things, you probably get what you pay for. Again, I am darn near thrilled with my jointer and planer.

Just checked out the Accu Head site.

They use 2-sided HSS cutters as opposed to 4-sided carbide. They're going to wear out a lot faster.

It looks like the cutting edges are parallel to the axis of the cutter head - not a shear cut, there's going to be more tear out.

The site is less than marginal at best - it's more or less a brochure that they put up. It actually says to visit them at their web site which you are on. Their email contact address is a gmail account?

Kevin Looker

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

Yea Kevin... I took a closer look after you posted.
I agree Todd & Saltytri The HSS would wear way too fast defeating most of the purpose of trying not to replace blades so often.

Guess it will be worth an extra $200 for the Byrd Shelix for my dewalt
Thanks for checking closer and sharing what you saw.

Just got my annual Grizzly catalog in. Gonna be looking at the Spiral head planers. Wife won't be happy!