Any Inca experts here?

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I recently purchased an Inca 410 (8-5/8" combination jointer/planer). It is a two-knife head. This is an old unit, and Inca doesn't have representation in the U.S. any longer. Does anyone know if Amana or someone else makes knives that are compatible with this unit?

Thanks,
Phil

[Bruce Cohen]

Garrett Wade in NYC used to be the US importer of Inca tools, after Inca was sold to a French concern, the quality fell as badly, GW stopped carring their stuff, their integrity prevented them from selling garbage.

I bet if you give them a call, (800 221-2942) they may have the knives in stock or will be able to point you in the correct direction to find something that will fit.

Good Luck,

Bruce

[JimD]

This is the planner/jointer that I have. Did you get the planner attachment or just the jointer? The planner attachment is a large table arrangement that clamps to the infeed table and has a handwheel on the top to control the thickness. It takes a fair amount of force to move the wood through the cutter but it will surface plane to about 8 inches wide.

What is wrong with the knives it came with? I am still using my original knives but have sharpened them repeatedly. There is a backer piece with each knive, the actual knive is pretty thin. I use a large slow spinning water grinder I got from Woodworkers Supply with a special planner knife jig from Woodcraft. I have about $150 in this sharpening setup but, with it, sharpening the knives is pretty easy.

Paste wax and sharp knives reduce the force required to feed through the planner noticably. There are nuts on the cutterhead to adjust the knife height but I still have to mess with them for awhile to get them set right.

If you come up with a parts supplier or a good way to set the knives quickly, please let me know. I need a shaft and bushing for the planner attachment. I made a piece that works but not great. The original got lost in a move.

Jim

[cgallery]

Hi Jim, yep I got got the planer attachment, too. The two large spring-steel springs were very rusty and I've spent a considerable amount of time cleaning them up. I actually found the Waxilit wax that inca suggested at Lee Valley, and I should have some of that next week. I was gonna use some Johnson's paste wax or Topcote, but figured I'd start with the manufacturer-suggested product first.

I purchased the unit used just a few days ago and it was advertised as including an extra set of blades. I figured I'd send the extra blades somewhere to be sharpened and try installing them when they were returned to see how they performed to the blades that were already installed.

You see, I have no way of knowing how sharp the current blades are. I purchased it from the son of the owner, (owner passed away). So I have no way of knowing if he had just had the blades sharpened, or perhaps thought it was time for another sharpening, or ?

Anyway, the extra blades were for a different kind of unit altogether. So my scheme to determine sharpness doesn't work. So I figured I'd just order more blades. But we all know the Inca story.

As Bruce mentions, GW was a distributor for these. But they don't have any blades left, and barely any common Inca parts at all. Apparently, they have some stuff that rarely needs replacing.

My thought was, perhaps these are a routine size of blade, and if I could find a set, I would purchase them and see how they compare to what came with the unit.

BTW, the neatest thing about this unit is the nifty wooden stand with built-in chip chute. I spent part of today making a cover for the chip chute to connect my ShopVac, and it works pretty well. So I have a single unit which is both a jointer and planer, and which has a single connected to my ShopVac and which barely allows any chips to hit the floor. Perfect for my absolutely tiny shop.

Thanks!
Phil

[JimD]

Phil,

I hope your shop vac is a big one. When I am jointing the face of a wide board or planning a wide board, my 1 hp Delta DC has trouble keeping up with the chip production.

When planning, if you find that the boards are getting pretty tough to push through, shut the machine off and remove any chips under the flat springs. It seems to help a lot with mine.

I have used the waxlit and it works well but I think Johnson's works essentially the same. Let me know what you think.

I built a stand to the Inca recommendations but I unfortunately built it in my pre-BT days and it is kind of crude. Painted softwood. Works fine, however. I modified the chute to have a hood for the DC. Used it Sunday and Monday night to plane some 8/4 maple. I bought the maple unplanned and used the Inca to get it to the final 1 3/4 thickness. A power feed would be nice but the Inca gets the job done making the $200-500 required to get something else pretty difficult to justify. If you have to plane any fancy grained wood, the manual feed is actually better because you can feed real slow and minimize chip-out.

Jim

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My ShopVac isn't that big but does seem to keep up. My bigger concern, I think, is having to empty it all the time. I use bags in it to catch the fine particitulate matter. I was at Rockler today and thought of getting one of those cyclone covers for a five-gallon bucket. I've heard some peope put an inch or two or water in the bottom and let the big pieces of sawdust get caught in there. But the cover they had didn't look like it would hold the hoses very securely, and it was $20. So I think I'm going to purchase a couple of dust collection connectors that you use for router enclosures and what not, and make my own cyclone thing.

I spent the last couple of days sharpening my blades. I was going to take them to Rockler. They charge $.80/inch. But many people told me I could do it better myself. So I purchased one of those "Scary Sharp" packages from Rockler (a piece of 1/4" plate glass, some sandpaper, and a honing guide) and did it myself. I made a small jig to hold the blades and used the honing guide Rockler included so I could adjust the angle and roll it back and forth nicely, and put a mirror finish on them. It took a long time because the previous owner was obviously using a honing stone parallel to the blade and he left quite a few scratches in the bevel that run parallel to the knife. It took forever to grind those out.

I just set the blades tonoght, using a technique I found on google.com. I don't know how great the technique is, it involves using a small block of wood on the outfeed table to see if the blades, when rotated, kiss or drag the block. They suggest dragging about 1/8" translates into blades set about 2/1000's higher than the outfeed table, which they say is optimum because they wear during use and yada yada yada. So I'm going to make a holder for my digital indicator tomorrow and measure the thing.

I received the Waxilit and I think it makes the top slicker than Topcoat seems to. Although the Topcoat was a huge improvement over nothing.

The infeed and outfeed tables seem to have some water spots on them or something. Have you ever use mineral spirits on the tables to clean wax build-up? Is it safe to do? The Waxilit can says to do this, I figured it may clean-up the water spots, too. But I don't know if mineral spirits on top of the Inca hard-anodized aluminum top is a no-no. I realize Inca recomended Waxilit, but Inca is gone and Waxilit may have changed their instructions at some, post-Inca point.

Finally, in terms of chip build-up under the springs, I noticed that the front spring (closest to the cutter head) has some sticky residue on the front bottom. It looks like there was once some foam weather-stripping there. Perhaps to keep the chip out? Do you have weather stripping on yours? I thought I'd buy some and install it to see if it helps. Yes, I have noticed chips getting stuck under there.

Sorry for the blathering. Too much caffeine.

Thanks,
Phil