Is a Spiral Planer head worth the $

[WDH]

Three years!  No, not bad at all.  I would love to hear from those that have turned the inserts to find out what to do and not to do.

[Bill Gaiche]

Large planers I am not familuar with. I have a small delta and have resharpened and bought new blades for it over the years. Planing postoak is pretty tough with blades even when new. I needed to do more postoak but knew that it was going to be slow. I have read on here and other places about spiral cutter heads and decided it may be a good idea. When I checked the prices I found that they were very expencieve for my small projects. I located this web site and bought a spral cutter from them. I was real skeptical at first about the quality and the ability to do a decent job. It was a just remove the old cutter head and install new. Took about 30 min. Ran a piece of postoak thru it and was impressed. Have done quite a bit sence I bought it a couple of months ago. Its quiter and cuts real good. It came with tool steel cutters not carbide, although you can buy them. They are expensive. For me for now the steel ones work good. If you hit a piece of metal all you need to do is turn the dull cutter and keep on. This works for me but may not for you that do a lot of planing. Good luck, bg  http://www.accu-head.com/

[red oaks lumber]

my first bottom infeed head is a spiral its 9'' wide with 100 inserts have turned all 4 sides got 500,000 bf  new carbide inserts a $1.27 each. those inserts have been feed paint, whitwash  coverd boards , mud ,rocks, hardware you name it it's probable seen it  if one breaks change it keep going. the most important thing is blowing the seat for the chip befiore retighting other than that they are very nice heads.

[Fil-Dill]

We usually get 12-15,000 bdtft from the first and 3rd side. We rotate from the first used face 180 deg. Then when it its dull, we usually get a little less bdft since the left and right edge are dull. We are not anywhere near getting 500,000 bdft from a set. More like 50,000. But we do love this head.

[Cedarman]

Ours is a 26" head.  Probably run 100,000 before changing knives.  I take all knives out first.  Sometimes you have to use a wrench with the torx head and hit it with a hammer while putting torgue on to get it loose without stripping the torx wrench.  I then clean all sockets.  I take each cutter and scrape the buildup off to make sure the cutter will seat into the socket perfectly. I turn the cutter 1/4 turn. We use only carbide.  Most have a little dot in the corner to help get them all the same. Then retighten with a battery drill that you can set the torque on.  I run some lumber to make sure all cutters have seated properly.  Sometimes during the first few thousand feet a cutter may loosen up.  You can easily tell by looking at the board.  Absolutely the best money spent on a tool.

[Kansas]

Planing hickory is near impossible without a spiral head without a lot of digout. Our Delta has a spiral Newman head. Sharpener sits right over the spinning head when its time. Scary process, but we have to do it every couple of years.