Foley Belsaw planer

[glenn bradley]

Looking good. Rollers for material return are very helpful. I also tend to stage material on them. This makes the top of the unit, between the rollers, available for a magnetically attached pencil, calipers, or whatever.

 

[Frank Fusco]

Very pleased with my Grizzly.

 

[Darren Wright]

So I've left the folks at belsaw several messages now with no responses. I get the impression that they are probably just not busy enough to run the shop every day.

After some further research, it looks like the Woodmaster 712 has similar rollers, with the shaft being about an inch longer, but similar off-sets on each side of the roller. I'll trim the shaft to length as needed.

Replacement Feed Roller 712 | Woodmaster Tools

woodmastertools.com

They also produce ones with the urethane rollers for about twice the cost. I kind of figure that this machine is 40 years old and the original rubber rollers still work, so new rubber ones probably will outlast the time I use it.

I've ordered two of their rollers and two sets of blades as they seem to match for my planer as well.

I also got the roller chain and swapped out all of the ones for the feed rollers, but I think the number of pitches stated in the manual must be off as all of them ended up looser than the ones I removed. I removed one link from the feed roller chain, the outer two reduction chains are still quite loose, so I'll remove the half link i've added to each. The woodmaster version has a separate feed motor rather than using the chain reduction. I'm starting to think maybe changing this over to a similar system may not hurt, but I'll keep trying to adjust the chains for now.

 

[Darren Wright]

Well, doesn't look like the Woodmaster 712 rollers quite fit. They are a bit short (about an inch) and have a keyway cut in the longer portion, which would probably wear away the bronze bushings that end rides in.


I was able to get a hold of Jim at Belsaw and finalize my order with him. Hopefully the new rollers will ship towards the end of the month, but he is still waiting for them to come in. I messaged woodmaster for return info on the rollers.

The blades from woodmaster were the same specs, so I am keeping those and installing them. Just need to clean up the slots and gibs first.


I did look at cost of a motor and pulleys to just convert to a separate feed motor. Between the cost of the motor, speed controller, and pulleys it was in the $500 range, with the motor being the expensive part. I'd also have to fabricate the mount for the motor.

 

[Darren Wright]

Still waiting on new rollers and I still need to finish installing blades, but the digital read-out arrived from taylor tools today. I bought an iGaging 8" readout for planers. I'll need to fabricate a bracket to attach at the same spot the tape read-out bracket attaches.

iGaging EZ View Precision Digital Read Out (DRO) for Heavy Duty Floor Model Planers with Remote Display

This digital read out (DRO) offers versatile mounting option to allow attachment to a wide variety of planer models. This digital readout is game changing for owners of larger floor-standing models. Getting an accurate thickness measurement using the onboard scale can be a challenge. With the...

taytools.com

I should be able to mount this under the metal housing and just have the display showing, which will mount above the power switch, out of the way. It also comes with a power cord to run off a wall wart instead of the battery, though the machine is 220v, so I may have to get creative on tapping into that, maybe a euro wall wart?

 

[Darren Wright]

I finished putting the new blades on last night. Tonight I fabricated a bracket to attach to an existing screw on the bed for the DRO. I mostly used existing holes and the brackets that came with the DRO to mount it.


It's all concealed under the cover.


The little rubber bumpers I added to help with the lid rattling were the right thickness for the cord to slip under.


All in all, only had to add 3 holes to the machine. I still need to calibrate it.

 

[Darren Wright]

I've been chasing a gremlin in the new DRO setup this afternoon. I had calibrated the DRO to the thickness of the piece of wood I had been running through and each time I ran the wood through it was measuring within a few thousands of what the DRO was showing. I planed the board down to .625" and turned the machine off. I then noticed that the display was reading 1.001".


I re-calibrated the DRO to what the wood was measuring, adjusted and took a pass, it was reading fine. As soon as I shut the planer off, the DRO jumped back to reading about .905".

It was then I realized I had mounted the DRO pretty close to the magnetic switch. And my assumption was that I was getting interference when the switch shut off.


I did some googling and found this is a common problem with these DRO's, as the cabling is not shielded.

Three Ways to Improve iGaging DRO Scales Reliability

Blog dedicated to DIY digital readout TouchDRO and other hobby machining and engineering subjects.

www.yuriystoys.com

I decided to test this by removing the zip ties and pulling the majority of the cable outside the enclosure. After several times of turning the machine on/off, it only happened when I allowed the bundle of cable to get too close to the machines switch.

I had a drawer full of clip-on ferrite cores, so I looped the usb cable at each end and added one to one by the reader, and one by the display. I then tucked the extra cable up away from the switch, and so far it seems to be working.


My other issue was the blades weren't all set at the same height out of the head. I adjusted them to be all parallel in the cutter head, but it looks like it is cutting about .010" deeper on the left side, so I'll take a look at adjusting the bed to the cutter. If that isn't possible I may need to adjust the blades on that side of the head a bit.

 

[Darren Wright]

I installed the rollers on top tonight. I had to offset them to prevent knuckle racking them when adjusting the bed height.

I used rivet-nuts to mount them.to the sheet metal, which will keep any nuts from working loose and falling into the works.




The rivet-nuts only stick down about 3/8”, so don’t interfere with anything.


I’m sure I’ve showed this before, but using the HF boxes to organize the rivet-nuts, dies, and tool.

 

[Darren Wright]

I've not been able to get any sheet metal ordered to finish up the dust collection on the planer, so just decided to use wood to create the chute between the blade area and the collector adapter. The collector adapter I picked up on amazon and was for a Jet planer.

It has couple of clips on top I decided to use for retaining the adapter to the chute.


I used 1/2 baltic birch for the chute with a piece of 1/4" luan for the upper portion, dado'd into the sides.


I mounted the chute by drilling holes in the lid and attached using cabinet screws.


The chute could have been slightly taller on the planer head side, I may try to close that up a bit with some brush material or deflectors, but a quick test and I only had a few chips make it out after a few passes.


It will do for now, may be temporary, may not be if it's working.

 

[Darren Wright]

Finally got a call a few days ago letting me know that belsaw.com has shipped the new rollers. They should be here by the weekend hopefully. The rear roller hasn't been grabbing real well, so glad to see the new ones coming.

 

[glenn bradley]

Very cool. There are a lot of people who really love their BelSaws. Link belts are always the best answer in my 20-odd years experience with them. I know there are some hard core "matched set" multiply, mono filament, belt folks out there and we all tend to recommend what has worked for us. My default go-to is an Accu-link or Fenner link belt. The initial price can be off-setting but they last forever. My 3HP jointer has been running the same Fenner belt without adjustment for nearly 20 years. Divide the lifetime by initial cost and you will see the sense of it IMHO. There is price and then there is cost . . . YMMV.