Wagner Safety Planer problems

[Ron Daves]

Wagner cutter.jpg (17.61 KiB) Viewed 28116 times

Sharpening Jig-flat table

cutting wheel doesn't match gullet

I sharpened my Wagner Safety Planer blades for the first time, but avoided grinding all the way into the gullet because the grinding wheel doesn't fit the gullets (see picture),
It seems to me that when sharpening the cutters, they should all be sharpened so that they all have exactly the same profile, however, instructions that came with the device, aren't clear.
I leveled the drill press table using a bent rod as instructed and proceeded planing sides of my current project. The planer left burns and circular grooves on my wood. I can avoid the burns if I move the wood through quickly, but the grooves are still there. The cutters have suspicious blue heat stress marks on the working tips. I'd have to grind off a lot of metal to get rid of those stress burns. The table is as flat as i can get it,
There's something wrong and I'm stuck. This planer isn't made any more and I may have wrecked the cutters. Any help out there?
I've included a close up of the cutter/grinding wheel mating fit, a burned cutter and my sharpening jig.

[Pat Foster]

This is just speculation, but when I sharpened mine, I put the cutters back in the same spot on the cutter base, just in case there was a difference in the cutter thickness, thinking this would avoid the problem you're having. Perhaps switching the cutters on the base? Might be worth the effort.

The cutters might be toast with blue spots, though.

Pat

[Alan Carruth]

It sounds as if the cutters may not be aligned properly. See that the cutting edges line up exactly with the punch marks on the body. The pockets are slightly angled, and the punch marks indicate the spot where all the cutters are at the same height.

I had a problem with one of those years ago. When the cutters wore down too far on the first one I got I got a second one. The first one had worked as advertised, but the second one gave me all sorts of trouble, throwing the work, cutting unevenly, and so on. It was just about impossible to keep the cutters properly aligned, and that made the tool work badly. What I found was that the bottoms of the pockets were not quite flat, nor were the cutters. The combination of things meant that the cutters were only secure in the pockets in one position, which might not be the one that aligned the edge with the mark. As soon as they hit the wood one or more cutter would rotate a bit to a more stable position, and stop cutting right. A few hours spent lapping the cutters flat and uniform in thickness, and scraping the pockets flat, solved the problem. A more recent set of replacement cutters came in properly flat, so I suspect this was a short-term production problem, if not an actual fluke. I note that, at about the time I got the one with issues there were a lot of reports of problems.

[Ron Daves]

What I thought were burn marks on the cutters were just deposits and polished out. I'll try sharpening again-all the way into the gullets.

[Bob Hammond]

It's been a long time since I gave mine away to an MIMF member. But I wonder if the scoring is caused by one or more cutters that are ground to a different thickness and/or diameter. I wonder if they should be ground on the bottom surface, and not in the gullet.

[Greg Steil]

does Stew Mac not offer one of these now?

[Ron Daves]

It's been a long time since I gave mine away to an MIMF member. But I wonder if the scoring is caused by one or more cutters that are ground to a different thickness and/or diameter. I wonder if they should be ground on the bottom surface, and not in the gullet.

The instructions that came with the planer said to grind deep into the gullet, so I sharpened the cutters again, per the instructions, and set the drill press up to grind each cutter the same. I measured the cutters and found the tips to be equal distances from the top of the planer when measured with a micrometer. Tomorrow, I'll give the planing process another run. I'm thinking the problem has something to do with the drill press. A shim here or there might solve the problem. If not, I have a radial arm saw.

[Chuck Tweedy]

Greg check this

[Ron Daves]

No Joy today. I built a new table for the drill press out of melamine. This table is larger than the one I built yesterday and I'm pretty sure the material is perfectly flat. However, when I planed a piece of scrap, the planer left grooves. So I'm thinking there's something wrong with the drill press shaft assembly or the table. I'll have to do some more experimenting tomorrow.

[David King]

Try indexing it to the chuck and then turning it 1/3 turn at a time in the chuck jaws to see if anything changes. You may just get lucky.

[Barry Daniels]

Sounds like one of the cutters is too thick. I would put my optivisor on and rotate the chucked up cutter by hand with the tips of the cutters just touching the wood surface to see if one is making contact before the others.

[Bob Hammond]

Hmm, also check if the body of the planer has any irregularities. If nothing's visible, then rotate the cutters around the positions in the head, >after marking the original positions<.

Of course, if the scoring is not so deep, then you could plane or sand the stock to thickness, after hogging off the bulk of waste with the Safe-T-Planer.

[Bob Hammond]

Another thought:

After grinding the cutters with the stone, assemble the cutters into the body. And then chuck the planer on the drillpress, and then joint the cutters in situ. Take a piece of fine silicon carbide paper and stick it to piece of MDF (or maybe plate glass?) with 3M Spraymount. Then place that on the drill press table, and >very very< gently, lower the cutters on to the paper, so as grind the cutters' tips to the same plane.

[Barry Daniels]

I do not think that is a good idea. The cutters should not be flat on the bottom or you will get burning. The cutters sit in a slanted recess which places the cutting tip slightly lower.

[Mark Fogleman]

I look at the Safe-T-Planer as a power scraper, not a planer. The "cutters" aren't cutting as much as they're scraping. If you feed from left to right facing the DP, try propping the left edge of the DP table up by a "scosh". Robert O'Brien uses a piece of sandpaper folded once in this excellent how-to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfaLmBGKjJY

[Bob Hammond]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I didn't mean to grind heavily so as to flatten the cutters. I meant to lightly grind the proud one(s) so that all cutters are in the same plane again when they're in position on the body. A similar procedure is often done when sharpening handsaws with a file before sharpening or retoothing.

[Barry Daniels]

Bob, you were very clear and I understand exactly what you are proposing but I am saying that your approach will not work and will cause severe problems with the WSP.

Each cutter sits in the planer at a slightly tilted position so that the cutting points are lower than the rest of the cutter and this places the three cutters in different planes. If you need to thin out one of the cutters (due to manufacturing defects) then that cutter should be removed and thinned out evenly. In no case should one flatten just the tip of a cutter as that will immediately cause burning of the cut. And the only remedy for this is to grind the gullet until the flat spot is removed which will require removal of a bunch of metal in the cutter.

This is not a saw so one cannot treat it like a simple toothed tool.

The reason I am being so adamant about this is I would hate for lots of folks on the forum taking your suggestion and ruining their WSP.

[Alan Carruth]

I'm seconding what Barry said.

Usually when the Safety Planer burns and goes dull it's precisely because the point has gotten rounded over on the bottom surface. The edge out on the side can still be sharp, but if the point gets leveled off on the bottom you're out of action. When you sharpen the cutters you have to get all of the rounding off the point and edge of the lower surface. That's where the action is,

[Barry Daniels]

I look at the Safe-T-Planer as a power scraper, not a planer. The "cutters" aren't cutting as much as they're scraping. If you feed from left to right facing the DP, try propping the left edge of the DP table up by a "scosh". Robert O'Brien uses a piece of sandpaper folded once in this excellent how-to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfaLmBGKjJY

I am not sure what the difference is between cutting and scraping. The WSP takes pretty large chips off the wood if you have the cut set at a good depth. You can easily take a 1/8" deep cut in certain woods and narrow cuts so that does not seem consistent with the term "scrape". But this seems to be an issue of semantics.

[Bob Hammond]

Hmm, the shortest route to the answer may be to buy a second set of cutters, and then take both the new and old to a tool & die shop and ask them for a price to measure the new and regrind the old.