Anyone in San Diego area known for doing Skill 100 repairs, cleanings, tuneups?
And does Tool Depot still special order blades for them?
Thanks in advance…
Do a search for PeteC on here and send him a message, he is in Dana Point and the best when it comes to Skil’s
Salted,
Mahana tells you true! A trip to Dana Pt. from San Diego is a small price to pay for Pete’s level of expertise!
Thanks guys!
Thank you everyone for the complements. This tool is mystical to me, each one represents countless future shapes that will come from it, even after most of us will be gone. I treat them as guests when they come here for work. You get kinda crazy and obsessive when you get old.
Pete
Wanna install my blades, and test my barrel to see if I didn’t ruin that too?
dave
Actually, I need to go to Tool Depot in Encinitas Tues or Wed (the other thread on the Makita planers), so I could meet with you and Salted and pick-up both your planers. You guys have my direct e-mail, so give me a phone number and I’ll contact both of you. I’m waiting on a delivery at Tool Depot, and they don’t know if it will be Tues or Wed. Pete
excellent. I called American National Knife, so they could get another blade out to me, unless you have one or a pair that I can just pay you for.
I don’t have any blades in stock, but I’m going to buy some HSS inventory from ANK.
I have a new set of HSS coming from ANK on Thursday/Friday
This is just a thought for you guys. I hone the edge of my blades freehand with a dremel tool. I have one of those cone shaped stones and just touch up the blades (while still in the planer).I remove the belt cover so I can hold the drum in the right place with my other hand.In the woodworking trade its called putting a “secondary bevel” on the blade. Takes about 30 seconds. Usually I can do this 20 times or so before it’s time to remove the blades and regrind them. I don’t like carbide blades. Nothing beats a sharp steel blade. (just my opinion worth maybe a dollar at the most)
Carbide blades cannot be sharpened, only HSS. There are several bevels; straight (factory), secondary bevel (like Roger), and concave (for experts). Most pro’s go 10 boards max between sharpening. You can sharpen Skil HSS blades just like a handplane blade (http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1029244), but you’ll have to find a sharpening jig that will hold the narrow blade. If Skil blades are nicked they’re history. You can’t regrind them because the length is fixed by the locking screw slot in the blade. This slot allow both blades to make an equal depth cut, so that blade adjustment is just aligning the blade straight, not in and out.
I went to Escondido Abrasive Supply and broke down and bought a green wheel for my blade shapener, even then it was a gazillion passes to put an edge on carbide.
Tony Channin gave me a set to grind, but once I got an edge on them I could see about 4-6 cracks in the carbide that were not visible on the unsharpened blades.
I gave them back to him and said NOT to use these blades if you value you life.
ATTENTION, Skil users. DO NOT EVER run your planer if you have lost the T-bolt that raises and lowers the blade height, it is also the retainer/keeper, the 3 set screw are not enough to keep the blades into the cutter head.
So far Claude Codgen and Steve Clark have run their tools without this in place and slung blades, Steves blade caught the front shoe and exploded, sending shrapnel into the palm of his hand, Claude just blew the barrel into complete ruin when the blade hooked the front shoe.
Listen to Jim, it could kill you or somebody else. This is the slot in the blades that I had mentioned. Cutter heads that have fit problems with the blades like Kawika’s probably didn’t have an adjustment screw (T-bolt) used. This is both an adjustment AND retainer. The other screws were probably overtightened in a attempt to hold the blade which squeezed the drum’s blade slot permanently. If your Skil is missing these screws, please PM me; I have a bag of them. They’re special screw heads, so don’t jam something else in there. When adjusting blades, these screws are turned all the way in and just slightly backed out to set the cut depth. This is to keep as much thread engagement as possible. That’s why if you regrind the blades they become shorter, and this screw has to be backed out too far.
On sharpening the blades, get a 5 or 10X eye lope magnifier at HF and look at them. Compare with a new one. Terry Martin looks at his with 40X. Never use a grinding wheel unless you’re an experienced sharpener. The heat will draw the temper out of the blade and although you can get an edge, it’s gone after short use.
The cracks in the carbide inserts weren’t visible under normal vision, it was with my magifying glass while looking to see the grind that I noticed the vertical cracks running from the edge to the weld, or I should say silver solder bond.
I had a 2" carbide cutter for an old Millers Falls router, it was for my first profile machine in 1968, when I took it to a carbide sharping service for touch up, the owner asked me what I was using it for, when I said I had it in a 22,000 RPM router, he about flipped out.
This was one of the first computers I had seen in use, he punched in the RPM and diameter and said I was running a tip speed of 27,000 MPH. He said the next time you are going to use it, let me know cause I’ll go to the next county.
He feared the silver solder would fail and sling the tip like a piece of grenade shrapnel, oh, the innocence of the ignoranat
Holy $#@% ! Now you guys are scaring me! I think I’m over trying to use carbide… glad I reordered HSS this time. And yes, I do have the 3 cutter screws per blade, and yes, I have the retention/adjustment screw per blade.
Glad I’m letting a pro work on mine! See u this afternoon Pete.
Aloha Pete:
Is there a special part number that you use when ordering these blades from them as I need to order a couple of sets but was unsure as to what to ask for when calling them?
Hi Robin, I’ve never seen any of the ANK blades until yesterday at Dave’s shop. I wasn’t impressed with these, and I think they aren’t as strong as the original Skil blades. The retaining slot is cut completely through the blade instead of just a shallow groove as the original, and they just seemed “rough” to me compare to the originals. Dave’s blade was almost bent like a pretzel after it became stuck in the drum and he tried to get it out. When I got home, I tried to bend an old Skil blade by beating on it with a big hammer. It broke rather than bend, so this tells me the ANK steel has problems or they’re not heat-treating it correctly. I ran out of my stock of Skil HSS blades a couple of years ago. I had the German ones too. I thought you have a type 4a or 5, which doesn’t use these blades but the kind like in current Bosch planers. I found some regular ones on e-bay from a tool company, but I would check if they’re originals or not: http://cgi.ebay.com/SKIL-100-REPLACEMENT-PLANER-BLADES-NEW-HIGH-SPEED-STEEL_W0QQitemZ350199614559QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5189860c5f&_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116
Aloha Pete:
Yes! I do have a Type 5 with the thin carbide blades, but I also have a Skil with the German HSS blades, I was looking for a backup set for that planer. I also discovered those blades on eBay but I was leery of them because if you look closely at the photo you can see that the adjustment groove is cut all the way through the blade just as you described for the ANK blades so I’m not convinced they are the real thing. The ones I have are still in good condition so I guess I’m just going to have to look after them until I can discover a replacement set that is of good quality.
Any idea if one can find the Type 5 style blades anywhere?