HF Jointer -- Anyone tried a spiral cutterhead ?

[ssmith1627]

Just curious guys -- anyone tried one of these spiral cutterheads as a replacement for the stock cutterhead / blade assembly ?

Would love to hear your results. Not cheap. But interested to see if it's worth it.

Steve

[Garasaki]

I wouldn't be surprised if no one has ever done this.

HF Jointer = budget buy

Spiral cutterhead = super expensive buy

Not too many people would fit into both catagories.

The cutterhead probably cost more then the jointer...

[LCHIEN]

agree with john g - why would you mismatch such a combo?

[Uncle Cracker]

That's like cooking chateaubriand on a sterno burner...

[cgallery]

I guess I wouldn't hesitate to try it if I already owned the HF jointer and if I would be able to reuse the spiral head on a different model should I decide to someday replace the HF.

[jspelbring]

Nope

Like putting "The Club" in a Yugo.

I do have the HF jointer. It does OK for small pieces, but I'm hoping to move up to an 8" or 12" next year - maybe the new Jet combo jointer/planer, or the Grizzly G0633. Ah, dreams...

[crokett]

I'd save the money and buy a better jointer before I put a spiral cutterhead in the HF. Not saying it won't work, just that I wouldn't do it.

[ssmith1627]

I haven't done it -- I was just curious if anyone had.

What about the more general question ? Have you guys tried a spiral cutterhead ? What are the results ? How much of a difference ?

We won't talk about the HF jointer right now. I bought mine used and it was all set up fairly well. I have an on/off type of magnet that I used to square up the fence and get it in the right position so I'm happy with that. But now that I've started fiddling with the table heights I have it ALL out of whack. I'm getting horrible results now and I'm ending up with the boards REALLY convex and it gets worse with each pass instead of better.

Hopefully this weekend I can go through and try to figure out what I'm doing wrong. As per the separate thread the other day, I had boards ending up a tiny bit concave. I thought my outfeed table was just slightly below the height of the cutterhead. But in adjusting that I've gotten things way out of line.

Some of this stuff is hard to learn on your own !

Steve

[messmaker]

I have not done it but I can't see any reason it would be any different than any other jointer. You would just have to get one that fit. A jointer is not that complicated.

[LarryG]

I've not tried a spiral cutterhead, but when Fine Woodworking Magazine tested a batch of 8" jointers a while back, some of which had spiral cutterheads, they said that the improvement was fairly small and would be difficult to justify economically for a small, hobbyist shop that uses a jointer relatively infrequently.

[LinuxRandal]

When Brian had a special on them a while back, I picked up a spiral cutterhead for my Ridgid Jointer. It did cost me more then my jointer, but my jointer was a gloat ($230). There are really only two reasons I see to have a spiral head on a jointer:
1. Hard to find blades or the amount of time between replacing them (my borg never seemed to have them, and I hate waiting (limited shop time).
2. Face planing highly figured wood, before running through a planer (where they should really be better).

Now this year, I have made the most money I have ever made (still isn't much), but overall, I haven't seen any benefit (don't get to use my shop as much as I would like).
The price I payed, would buy me a lot of regular blades (but I hated fiddling with setting them up), so this was a want itch, I scratched.

[cobob]

I think Grizzly has some 6" spiral heads for ~$200 ... but resharpening the joiner blades cost $9.

[Tom Slick]

are you talking about the segmented carbide helical cutterheads or the spiral knife style cutterhead like this http://www.sunhillmachinery.com/Spir...Conversion.htm

I've used a segmented carbide helical cutterhead planer and the difference in finish was like night and day. that was in a production environment and in a planer, I think the cost would be hard to justify for a hobbyist. If you can adjust your fence so that it goes across the cutterhead at an angle you can get a slicing effect similar to a spiral.

[drumpriest]

I purchased the article to which Larry was referring when I was jointer shopping. Not only did they not think the spiral was better, but they gave all of the spiral models lower marks on cut quality. I have used my jet 8" to face joint some pretty figured maple without tear out, nice sharp blades.