Guitar builds. How many of you find old wood and repurpose it?

[John Arnold]

I have just seen helical cutters in operation on big planers. I haven't used them myself.

[murrmac123]

Originally Posted by John Arnold

Nope. I have planed to 0.060" with no sled. As I mentioned, the Ryobi AP-10 (long out of production) is the only portable planer I have seen that will do it. The secret is the closeness of the infeed/outfeed rollers to the cutter head.
The AP-10 revolutionized the planer market, being the first affordable portable thickness planer. Today there are many others to choose from, but all are inspired by the Ryobi. But the tendency has been to increase capacity to 12", 13" or more, and as a result, the architecture is such that they don't do as well on thin stock. In this case, bigger is not better.

Interesting, John. If I hadn't read it here from your own lips (sorry about mixed metaphor) I would never have credited it. But I can see that the closeness of the cutter head to the feed roller would indeed be critical.

The helical multi-cutterhead mentioned by Charles is indeed like night and day compared to conventional parallel straight blades. I do not own one myself but have access to one (a Panhans) when needed, and it is a superb machine. I have seen the surface it produces on figured timber and it is indeed spectacular.

I would never contemplate using it without a sled, however, to thickness anything under, say, 3/8" thick.

Michael Fortune, who is arguably the finest furniture maker in the world today, has successfully planed highly figured timber to as thin as 1/16" using a very simple trick to ensure that the leading edge of the workpiece doesn't shatter.