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dpb

On 10/3/2013 10:16 AM, wrote:
On Thu, 03 Oct 2013 10:00:45 -0500, wrote:
It's really quite a sight to take some of this old 2x12 fir or syp
that's 60-100 yo and whack off the really weathered to reveal the
underlying old growth material still inside..

I'm guessing it feels like new found wood. How do you handle flat
surfaces? Those missed remnants and dirt would play havoc with planer
blades. Spend a lot of time with a metal detector?

Nah, I pull what I find and clean up some but don't worry about it too
much. There's very little that has been surface nailed--it's mostly
either salvaged structures like the fill-in shed between the barn and
the old silos we took down or the wide stuff from the old feed bunks
were built w/ a single-plank sides/ends and the only nails were the
bottoms nailed into the sides/ends. The legs were 4x4 bolted and a
couple of 1/8" by 2" strap straps bent and bolted at the sides went
under for intermediate support. They were 12' long so could carry on
the rear tractor platform thru all the 14' gates to move from one lot to
another...we quit feeding years ago and they've just sat there and I got
tired of them being in the way when trying to clean up the lots and
didn't have a functional one left in the group so drug them up on a slab
and pile 'em up and began to salvage enough to end up with 3-4 shortened
ones for the horse salt, etc., ...

They were used for feeding ensilage for years which is acidic such that
the 3/8" bolts thru the legs have corroded away to as little as a 1/16"
left in the middles while the outside ends still look nearly pristine.
16d commons in the bottoms to the edges are about like a furniture tack
at the head end and then there may be a half-inch section inside the
2x12 that's the size of a 8d or so, maybe...all the rest is basically
"just gone"...

And that's in dry country w/ annual rainfall 20".

Anyway back to the question -- I have an old Rockwell/Delta Model 13
planer and I just keep a set of old knives in it -- a knick or two
doesn't matter for the cleanup and I can swap out if really need a clean
surface. The knives on this are much heavier than the little lunchbox
guys; it's built on the same model as the larger industrial planers w/
full cast beds and all--it ways 350 lb or so I'd reckon.

It came from an old furniture factory in PA years ago--I got in in the
early '80s; I think its manufacture date is sometime in early 70s or
even late '60s. This factory had 27 of these arranged in 9 rows of 3 --
their rough stock all came in and was thicknessed to working dimensions
by the three passes. These became available when they finally upgraded
to fewer 18" and 20" machines to cut the number of operators down.
Unfortunately, it didn't work as a business model w/ the changing face
of furniture manufacturing in the US and the whole facility went
belly-up by the early '90s.

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