The Upgrade Curve

The eighth level of purgatory

Today I planed some Eastern White Pine for my next cabinet project (a little update on which later). It’s a fairly repetitive task, so the mind tends to wander and I got to thinking about the machine I was using and the journey that took me to it. Seasoned woodworkers will know the upgrade path all too well. I like to think of it as an S-curve, or at least it was for me:

My current planer thicknesser is a Hammer A3-31, which I’ve had for 12 years. It’s a good machine and does everything I need it to. When I started out, and before I had any machines, I got the timber merchant to plane up material for me if I needed sizes that weren’t just off the shelf. It worked fine for a few projects, but it’s pretty restrictive, and the timber cost is high if you buy like that.

One day at the tool shop there was a special offer on an ex-demo Kity 439 planer thicknesser, from the same French maker as the little tablesaw I had at the time. So I took the plunge. I owned it for probably 24 hours I think - it was a total piece of shit and I returned it to the shop the next day. I don’t want to denigrate my French brethren, but suffice to say they didn’t throw the same dedication into their machinery manufacture as they did their cheese making. In fact I think some parts of the machine were produced using techniques from the cheese making industry.

After that I decided to take a different tack, and bought myself a DeWalt 733 thicknesser (I think in the US you would call this a lunchbox planer - we don’t have as much for lunch here in the UK, so our lunchboxes are considerably smaller). It was a decent enough machine, other than the noise. Without a planer to level the boards first, I mostly tried to buy flat boards and then just chuck them in the machine and hope. Fatalistic planing was a surprisingly effective approach. Sometimes I might hand plane off a high spot, or stick a shim in to level the underside, but mainly I just chose boards that were flat to begin with.

By this time I was well onto the steep part of the curve and was Jonesing for a more advanced machine. What my budget would allow was a German-made Scheppach HMS260ci, which was a combination planer thicknesser. It had cast iron beds (that is the ‘ci’ part of the name) and was generally reasonably well made. That said, the cast iron was produced with a weird scalloped finish to it, which I was never entirely happy with. For me the great downfall of this machine was the blade arrangement, as it used re-sharpenable carbon steel blades that were an absolute nightmare to set. I spent hours fiddling with that thing, shifting screws in and out, chasing perfection. Also at 260mm the width was restrictive for some applications.

I think of the Hammer A3-31 as the first ‘proper’ planer thicknesser I had. Made in Austria by Felder (the Hammer sub-brand is the poor mans Felder alternative) it’s a solid and well-made machine. It uses a disposable blade system that requires zero effort to set in position, which I love. It’s their equivalent of the Tersa system used by numerous other manufacturers. If you choose the Cobalt steel blades they last an incredibly long time. I added the upgraded digital dial gauge on the rise and fall wheel, which makes precise thicknessing an easier task. The dust extraction works reasonably well, although there’s always a bit that’s leaked out when I’ve finished. Is that an age thing (asking for a friend)?

Will I upgrade again? Probably - once an addict, always an addict. I aim to sell this machine to avoid moving it when we downsize to a smaller house in the next year or two. When I buy again it will probably be a Felder and it will almost certainly have a spiral block. Or maybe I won’t miss the machine, as I haven’t many others I’ve sold, and manage without. Maybe I’ll have to re-draw that curve with the next epoch of Upgrade-Man’s existence.

In other news, I made some further amendments to the design of my cabinet on stand. After looking at the second iteration drawings for a week or two I decided I’d lost some of the initial dynamism I had achieved in the first one. So I drew a third version that reverted some of the changes and kept others. I’m much happier with this new iteration and whilst I may change my mind again, for today that’s the version I’m going to make.

Dust is still causing respiratory problems for me, even with a mainly hand tool approach. After making the Oak bench hook a few weeks ago, I felt ill for about a week. I wonder if it might be species specific, so I’m going to stick to Pine on the cabinet project and see what happens. These issues are in part the reason for the long gaps between posts recently. Writing about woodworking without actually doing any starts to wear a bit thin after a while. That and the fact that I am a bit shit.

I notice from my stats that this Substack recently ticked past 2,000 followers, which is both astonishing and pleasing in equal measure. So welcome to new readers, and thank you for your persistence to those who’ve been here a while.