Any suggestions on a clean and effective way to chop the back of the Skil 100 base? I will have no intention of ever selling the unit so resale is no concern. Any advice from the pro’s is much appreciated.
Put a metal blade on a skil saw and cut it off.
A hacksaw will do it. The aluminum is soft and easy to cut. File or sand the edges smooth and round slightly.
You will be glad you got rid of the unneeded excess. How short are you gonna cut yours?
Thank you both for the answers. I will report back on the outcome. Hey Bill, I was contemplating cutting the base back to be flush with the back of the handle. Would you recommend something else?
I like Sparky’s planer on the Inter Island website. He drilled holes on the sides of the shoe to make it even lighter. I am a Skil Tweak Freak and am always messing with them. After you cut your base wetsand it with 500…then 1200 and hit it with some rubbing compound. Finish with a coat of turtle Wax and it will slide over a blank like hot butter.
You can also glue the tail piece back on later if you want. Here is how I did it with epoxy and glass. First get a sheet glass and wax it with car wax. Take the part you cut off an glue it on to the long base with some west epoxy. The shoe is siiting on the glass so it is dead flat and in line. just hold the whole deal together with tape until the resin cures.
Next cut some fiberglass and do a build up on the top of the shoe (using epoxy). After the whole thing cures pop it off of the sheet of glass. You should have a full length planer again.
I am tweaking one for my friend Jim Stephens right now. I just found some lime green lacquer. (can you guess whats next?)
Mine is cut about 2 inches shorter then the handle. The maximum length to fit inverted arcs is handle length. Shorter is even better.
[img_assist|nid=1047381|title=Bil's Planer & Balsa|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=444]
Is that one of those hundred dollar exhaust chutes from eBay? Sweet.
Hey there is another dust chute on ebay right now! I may try to buy it for less money. That way I will be saving much needed bucks! Smart eh? … Bill’s looks like it came from an aluminum can…they work better then the $100 dollar models but don’t look as cool.
Bills right; longest you want it is at the back of the handle. Can't remember but I think I hack-sawed mine and then filed it. Bill Thrailkill looked at it once when he aligned my Swedish blades for me and mentioned that I could file and sand a little more to take away a few hard edges and corners. Kudos to John Mel for clueing me on how to float the depth adjustment. Lowel
I was just joking with him about his tennis ball can deflector. Why buy something expensive from eBay if you can jerry-rig something like Bill has done. Who cares what it looks like as long as it works.
Don’t worry Ozzy. I was just kidding around also. Sorry if it came out wrong. Swaylocks is getting to be a just a bit to intense for me I think.
Amazing! Where else can someone get this caliber of advise from pro’s? Nowhere! I heart Swaylocks! Thank you everyone for amazing insights. When I chop the base over Thanksgiving I will report back with pictures.
Aloha
No worries man. I know you were joking. I was just afraid my joke may have been mis-interpreted. You’re right, Sways does get a little intense sometimes.
And when you Chop your Skil the god of Skill will roar in anger and cast you out of heaven and you will spend forever damned to hell shapeing surboards for all the non surfers in hell ! SO BE IT!!!
No… that is one of the very special… $200.00 ones…
I will make you a guys each one and while the price is admittedly more then the ones on eBay… you do get 3 FREE, brand new tennis balls with each Chute!
The reason I use this kind of Home Made Chute is because, in my hands, any other chute will clog up immediately. Fact is, even this will clog fairly often but a flick of my thumb will clean it. The main reason it clogs is not so much the amount of foam coming out of my planer but rather the shape of the foam coming out.
When roughing, the pieces leaving the blades are mostly the width of the blade and about 3/8" wide. They are like thin logs or slabs and they tend to cross up and stack upon each other and easily clog the chute. I tried a bunch of different shapes and this one works the best for me… BUT… I don’t recommend it for Liability Reasons!!! The top of the blade will be just a very short distance away if you happen to stick your fingers into the chute!
One of these days I will get around to setting up a vacuum… like my To Do List needs anymore stuff on it!
Just as long as you don’t need to do any hitchhiking, Lefty.
Ha! Funny one Ozzy! Life is funnier then you might think… My left thumb WAS cut off once. Not by my planer but by a visiting surfer from a small Mediterranean country. He dropped in on me at 6’ Rocky Point Lefts. I was coming from way behind a section and then turned up into the lip to prep for the end of the wave. He dropped on me on the other side of the section, trimmed out on a diminishing shoulder and did a big roundhouse cut back heading into the lip… EXACTLY where I was just arriving after making it around the section!
He continued to cutback into the lip and when he finally saw me there, tried to turn tighter to miss me but he spun out. This only launched him and his board right into me at high speed. The pointy nose of his brand new hot pink Blue Hawaii Surfboard was coming right at me. I put my hand out and deflected it off to the side and away from my vitals but it cut right through my palm and nearly amputated my left thumb. My thumb was just hanging by the skin. Took me out of work for about a year while it was reconstructed!
Ouch! Don’t you just love shoulder hoppers. Especially in waves of consequence.
Shoulder hoppers suck, especially those who don’t know how to handle the intensity of Hawaiian Surf nor slow down a bit and tune in to the culture of a spot before they try to dominate and make their mark there!
[img_assist|nid=1047404|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=497]
i made collection chutes out of a plastic bottle for my/others skill 100s.
a child’s size sunny d bottle…like 6 or 8ozs.
the mouth of the bottle is a perfect fit for standard hoses.
and the body of the bottle is just right …with a sized cut out(using a box cutter) it literally fits to a tee. paint them with chrome paint and it looks like a custom made/machined part…all for about 5cents/crv.
the plastic is tough and ridgid enough that it won’t collapse.
also,you can modify or leave it…and use it as a regular chute.
herb
if anyone wants one… i can let you have it… for say 98 dollars…that’s a 2 dollar savings !!!
lol…jk…lol.
herb