2020 Product Showcase: Woodmaster Helical Head

So Matt, there's a lot of weird stuff going on in the world and one of the byproducts of that is the big show in Atlanta, IWF was canceled for this year. So, we're compensating here in my shop. What's going on here? Well, we got a bunch of products here that we're going to test out and show how they work and its features. Yeah. And we're gonna talk about them. And then I think what's going to be fun is... Is that ,showing them, showing them how they work. Yeah. We're gonna run the tools and take you through features, benefits. So, we're bringing the show, the woodworking show to you. Ready to get rolling? I'm ready. Let's go. Make it happen. We're starting with wood Woodmaster, my brain wants to call this a Woodmaster planer but that would be doing it a disservice. Absolutely. Anyway, we've got a multifunction tool here, right? We're going to talk about the planer 'cause that's a key point. However, what's cool with this, is a lot of woodworkers monetize this machine by, in addition to planing, making molding, doing gang ripping, and that kind of stuff. So, on the table here, let me get my junk out of the way. We've got some of the stuff that goes with that aspect of the machine. So, when we talk about the other things it's capable of doing. Again, we'll come back to the planer head, but drum sander and I believe you have a sander in your shop. I do. And do you use it a little bit? Yeah. I mean I think a sander is one of the best additions you can put in a shop because, anything we can sand through this and not have to then stand there with a random orbit sander. Right. Sanding, you know, the S word, I try to avoid whenever possible. I think mine ran for six hours straight yesterday. I was flattening a lot of stuff. So So, the addition of a drum sander to this tool is one thing we can do by swapping parts out. We can also then run a molding head in this. And, it's just what it sounds like when I run a stick of wood through there, I can turn it into molding and I can do a couple of things with that. We can put molding in our own house. We can sell that molding and preceding the molding step. Very likely, have set it up with gang rips. So, imagine in a second, you're gonna see under the hood here. And there's a shaft in there on which I can position these cutters. So, when they're in this position, I'm gonna make a rip that is that wide, that wide, that wide. So we can use that to really, really easily feed the wood through an automatically cut it to those sizes and then put the molding head in. What I like about this too is that it's a small, it's a footprint and you have so many different things. A lot of capabilities with smaller. Yeah. So, especially if you've got one of those small shops. If you're in a small garage, whatnot, you're getting a lot of capacity with just one machine. Well, then riddle me this batman. So we've got a planer, a sander, gang rip, and a molder.. So I've got a pretty good shop, pretty good sized shop but I wouldn't want to eat up the real estate to have each of those five as a standalone tool in there. So, how many square feet is that? Yeah, lots, I'm really excited about the planer head. So, let's take the hood off. I'm gonna unplug it first. Thank you. Let me get that. All right. All right. Take dust shroud or dust collection. We're going to disconnect. And what we want to do here is get this off. 'Cause I am really excited about this planer head. So I love this feature that you put on here. Magnets for your washers. Because I have dropped these on the floor more than once. All right. All right. We'll lift this off to the floor. All right. So here is what's cool. I'm gonna spin this to the camera. This is a helical cutter head with carbide inserts. And Matt, we were just talking about what's going on here. So, you give the folks at home a little helical versus spiral here. And mind you, George just gave me this breakdown of the helical versus spiral. So we'll see what we can do. You know, I don't even know if I can put it into your words. So, the way. The helical part and if I need to, we'll pick it up. See, now I'm blacking out. What's the other word? Spiral. Spiral. So, spiral is basically going to be like, you take it like a sheet of wood or sheet of paper. It's gonna be your knife and it's gonna be a flat piece. And it's just going to scrape away at the wood, right? It's attacking the wood dead straight. Dead straight. So, we could have carbide inserts like we have here. In a straight line. In a spiral pattern. Yeah. But, each of those cutters is basically perpendicular to the grain of the wood that you're feeding. Versus this, it's going to be more of kind of shaving the wood, like you would with, like turning with a gauze. When you do a shear instead of a scrape. You think about when you were maybe learning to use a hand plane and they tell you, instead of just attacking the woods straight on, Give it a little angle. Skew it just a little bit. And that's what happens here is, on a true helix, like we have here, each individual cutter is introducing that shear angle. And you're going to see in just a second, the cut quality. It really, really, really goes a long way toward improving the cut quality. Yeah. Yeah. Because, like you said, the hand plane, that's a great, if you got something straight, with that straight blade, you might kind of tear it, or might bounce little bit, this is gonna cut through nicer. Yep. So, it's a really cool thing. And I guess that I have run a lot of stuff through here and I continue to not being able to get over. I just can't get over the cut quality that comes out of this. And we should mention, there are a variety of sizes of machines available from Woodmaster. So, if this size isn't right for you, you can go up, you can go down, you can pick the size and the footprint that works for your particular shop and the work you're going to do. I just noticed this too, the fact that they are the carbide cutters and you know, you've got four sides, before you have to think about replacing your blades. So it's cool. So, one thing, you know, carbide we know is long lasting. Mh-hmm. And then on top of that, each of these cutters has four sides. So, one of the things that's cool about individual inserts like this as opposed to a long planer knife is if I do inadvertently send something through and I chip one of these cutters. I could turn just that one cutter, where on a planer knife, I'm gonna send that whole knife in to get sharpened, even though I only have a bad spot maybe in the very middle of it. So, it gives me a lot more options. And then two, just over the life of the cutter head. Being able to, when at some point they're going to be dull so I can turn them 90 degrees, fresh edge. And I can do that three times beyond where we are right now. Fresh edge, fresh edge, fresh edge, with each of those turns and very cleverly, they're numbered. So ,I can keep track of which is which. That's a very smart addition to the inserts. No, I love that. Yeah, and it's that true helical head, you can see it, just as it's coming through here. Yep. All right. We have no questions on the Woodmaster yet. Everyone wants to see it. I want to see it. I actually haven't even seen it run yet. You're just talking about it. So, we're gonna show you ways to make chips. I'm ready. All right. Let me move my laptop. So we don't have an industrial accident. Nice. Twice. I've dropped those. I like your band clamp. And we have for you, what I believe will be an absolutely beautiful piece of spalted maple. And, when we talk about these helical cutters, there are a couple of things going here. So, we're gonna get a good surface finish, but this becomes especially important in woods that are prone to chipping. So, anything that's got some figure to it, a bird's eye maple, a curly maple, birch in general can be a wood that's difficult to plane just 'cause it's prone to chipping. So, these are all occasions where the helical cutter. In addition to, you know, it's gonna give a good surface finish to any wood, but it's really a benefit when we get into that stuff that's prone to tearing up. Hm-hmm. Are we ready for power? I think we are. Where'd this cord go? Up, right above your head. Oh. I forget about that stuff. Okay. All right. We're in our happy place? Matt is gonna get his ears on. Yeah. Can we be there? Think you're okay there. Okay. Yep. [Matt] Dang. That's nice. Now. We're gonna challenge. Nick is running camera tonight. We're gonna challenge Nick a little bit. Here's one of the things that's so cool about when you get a good cutoff piece. Tell me what you need Nick. 'Cause I can see curl in the maple, especially right there. Yeah. There's a bunch right through here too. I noticed that there's like the speed, now this is, it's variable speed right? You can adjust the feed. Yep. How that works too, right? Yeah. And that's important especially 'cause we're multifunction. So, what we need for planing versus sanding versus molding versus gang rip. Yeah, you're right. It's variable speed. And I didn't mess with that because we were just, 'cause we're only planing. But it felt like it went through. I mean, it was set up perfectly like went through at a perfect pace. And the other thing, this is really subjective on my part but I find that I believe the helical head runs quieter than a straight knife cutter head would which, you know, either way we're gonna wear hearing protection but there's just less of that, less icky noise going on in the shop. So, I think we did a pretty good job of bringing the show to the people, did you enjoy this tonight? I had a blast. It was fun. You know, I learned something. Hopefully, they learned something, you know? Did you have fun? Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And I think it's one of the things I really like about my job is the opportunity to see tools and then take my excitement about that and telegraphing that out. So hopefully that happened. Yeah. No, I hear you. I love it. I love this. It's always fun to try something out. Well, thanks so much for coming along and yeah, it was a blast.