Jointer and planer blades/ all equal?
Howdy,
Well, i’ve been looking into the quality of different metals while learning to turn bowls on my junky grizzly lathe. Its amazing how quickly the junky lathe tools loose their edge, while the expensive ones i’ve bought hold up. I guess the expensive ones were M2 steel. Now i’ve talked with some folks about my jointer/planer knives and i assume the ones that came from china in my shop fox 8″ jointer are similar in quality to the bandsaw blades that came in my shop fox bandsaw that couldn’t cut its way out of a paper bag. I talked with some support guys at grizzly and they said their replacement blades are a lot better than the ones that come in the machine. I wonder why they shoot themselves in the foot with the cheapo’s? Gets a bad impression till you buy something decent. Oh, well. Anyone have experience with a brand of economical jointer blades for a 4 knife head, 8″ machine? Frued? As we’ve seen in some fine woodworking reviews on router bits not all carbide is the same, not all metal is the same, and even metal called the same “M2” seems to have different wear properties. What is the work on the street? Just get the upgrades at grizzly? Buy somewhere else? They are fairly easy to hone in place, and as they are soft they sharpen quick. Any help?
Thanks
kelvin
Replies
My experience with freud ( thickness planer)was not good ,they were warped.I re ground them and they held up fine.
Bought a set of White side ( joiner)and i'am not too happy with the way they seemed to get dull.
Chris
I've had good results with CMT's.
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It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. ~David Ormsby Gore
M2 is a type of tool steel with better wear resistance and it's rated as a "high speed" alloy. One of its primary uses is in stamping dies and that's about as tough a usage as you'll find. Probably more info than you're looking for, but:
http://www.crucibleservice.com/eselector/general/generalpart1.html
I'm going to look into this myself as the stock blades Rigid sells are somewhere near hard butter in their wear resistance.
Edited 6/21/2007 5:24 pm ET by BoardmanWI
I just found this link I'd saved a while back
http://globaltooling.bizhosting.com/planer_knives.html
I believe they only have planer blades, but they do carry a T1 alloy that's even better than M2. And carbide as well.
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