Fellow wood workers,
I need your help! I recently purchased a used planer that is a Rockwell Delta ( a pretty old one by the looks of it). There was not an owners manual with the planer. How do I go about sharpening the blade or getting a manual or book that can teach me these things.
Replies
Shamrock
Try going to oldwwmachines.com for your question, they where pretty helpful for me in looking up a old Homecraft Jointer.
Call Delta for a manual and get John White's book on machery from http://www.cambiumbooks.com. Always start with the manufacturer.
Unless you have an expensive grinder especially set up for sharpening long blades, they are typically sent out to a local sharpening shop. To keep the jointer in service while one set of blades are out being sharpened, you will need to own a couple of extra sets. The sharpening shop will have extra blade sets at a better price than buying them from the manufacturer.
The original owners manuals for many of these machines can downloaded for free from the manufacturer's web sites or at owwm.com, but they are typically badly written and only barely cover how to get the machine properly set up.
John White ( the guy who wrote the Care and Repair book)
I found that it is not true that "Unless you have an expensive grinder especially set up for sharpening long blades, they are typically sent out to a local sharpening shop." After I paid a local shop to grind my blades variously concave, convex, & wavy, I made a wooden jig for sharpening them on my bench grinder. That was 40 years ago. I recently bought one of those fancy Makita devices with waterstones. The bench grinder is better & tremendously faster. I do keep an extra pair on hand which are sharp. I am careful enough not to need more than that & I don't often have to sharpen.Cadiddlehopper
Would you please post a photo of your planer sharpening jig? Thanks.
If you have the interest in setting up your own jigs, and have a certain amount of mechanical ability, you can sharpen just about anything in shop. I suggested that the original poster send out his blades because he appeared to be just starting up with woodworking and he probably isn't at a point yet to tackle what can be a challenging project for a beginner. Hopefully he has a good sharpening shop nearby.
John W.
What's the model number of the planer?
I have an old Rockwell planer: RC-33 model 22650. It was also sold with stand and larger motors: 22651, 22655. I think the Delta DC-33 is essentially the same.
I used to get the 13-1/8 inch blades professional ground and sharpened. They were not only sharp but straight when the sharp edge was held against a steel ruler. Sad to say that precision grinding shop went out of business in the 2009 recession. I tried other sharpening shops but the sharp edges of the blades came back not straight. They worked but not as good as three dead straight blades.
I purchased a Makita 9820-2 sharpener and put a lot of effort into learning how to get the best results. It was possible to get the blades almost straight but took a lot of effort. With the spinning water-stone it is a messy process and hard on the neck and shoulders if you do it for long.
I decided that sharpening and setting blades was not the reason I took up woodworking as a hobby. Installed a Byrd Shelix head. With these heads the small carbide cutters are rotated or replaced when dull, so no more sharpening. And the cutters are bolted in place with no adjustment, so no more setting of blades.
The Byrd Shelix head also gives a much better wood surface finish. Less tear-out on difficult grain and a dead flat surface.
While replacing the head, I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean, lubricate and adjust the machine. Great old machine runs better than new.
There were no instructions available on how to change the head on RC-33 so I made a YouTube video instruction for the next person: https://youtu.be/zFdcSKi47ZU
Link to RC-33 instruction book and other documents including PDF instructions on how to do change head: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_Qm84_ZeMmsxgP-hHsI-Ppf39kiUOEU3?usp=sharing
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