My new baby

General Discussion
1

So I had been looking for a new planer recently and couldn’t find a rockwell that I wanted. My dad ended up finding a rockwell in a florida local paper. I called the guy and he said his step dad bought it and used it once while building their house and put it away until he passed away recently. The guy wanted an EXTREMELY fair price and I went ahead and bought it. Well when it showed up I was STOKED. Shaped my first board with it and loved it. Attached is a picture of it. It came with everything it had when new.

Austin

www.austinsurfboards.com

2

what about a pic of the board you shaped with it??? Looks very clean. Congrats.

3

Wow - stoked you found one. Nothing like using an old tool & channeling the guy who first bought it & used it… :slight_smile:

4

Whoaaa. very nice and a skosh older than mine ( polished vs painted). You didn’t say it came with the cutter-sharpening jig, which is a definite score.

In fact, if you have a decent set of manual pages for the sharpening jig, I’d appreciate it if you could scan 'em, as mine suffered a mite before they came to me.

Enjoy

doc…

5

yeah, that’s nicer looking than mine too. How much did you pay for it (just out of curiosity)?

6

Hey keith,

I paid just over 200 plus shipping. I definately am still getting used to it. My arm is really sore from shaping. After doing the grunt work with the rockwell I picked up my hitatchi and almost threw it across the room accidentally. It is extremely light in comparison. You cant beat the power of that rockwell though.

Hey doc,

The sharpening documents are kinda stiff and some pages are stuck together. I see if I can get them to come apart without damaging them. I also find a new carbide cutter for 102 bucks online. A friend of mine is looking for parts for his rockwell. Got any parts laying around up there doc?

Austin

www.austinsurfboards.com

7

Hey, Austin,

Once you get used to the big sucker, and how the weight helps you , you’ll let the other thing get dusty. Though you may find yourself adjusting bench heights and such.

I happened to stumble across a pretty good parts source: http://www.toolpartsdirect.com/cgi-bin/findlist.cgi?partnumbers=&brands=portercable ( for porter-cable, go to toolpartsdirect.com for other makes) . They don’t have a parts chart there, you will have to go to http://media.ptg-online.com/20031113111609_653.pdf and get the six-digit part numbers, then use those to search what toolpartsdirect has.

They do have drive belts, cutter shaft bearings and brushes for the 653, which was all I checked just now.

And yes, if you can get a good look at those prints/manual pages, I’d appreciate it. Mine wound up sticky too, which is how come I don’t have the info as good as I’d like.

Thanks

doc…

8

found the part he was after. little steep but at least you can find it. thanks doc.

Austin

www.austinsurfboards.com

9

Hey Austin, I’ve found parts, blades etc on Ebay… there aren’t any carbide cutters up now but there is an HSS one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/PORTER-CABLE-PLANER-653-STEEL-SPIRAL-CUTTER_W0QQitemZ7587578046QQcategoryZ42283QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Last carbide one I saw went for $85 I think.

Your friend might be better off finding a machine to part out, I have seen them go in the low $100 range before. Doesn’t take too many parts to reach that number…

K