Fall 2021 Product Showcase: Woodmaster

Woodmaster and we've seen this product on the showcase before. You also happen to own a Woodmaster. So give us for you... I know you're really, really like the tool, look at you grinning. I know you like the one that you have, so how does this fit into your scheme of woodwork? Yeah, so I've been, you know, using this product for about 10, 11 years now and it is just front and center in my shop. I use it probably, I say, it spends probably 95% of its time as a planer and I can run anything through that. I mean, I run some wide rough planks through that thing, and it just powers through. I mean, this is a five horsepower motor which is a very robust motor for a planer and just has no problem taking a nice deep cut. I have the helical head which I believe you have as well. And that just lays down a very nice surface on it. So that's kind of how it spends most of its time. I switch it over occasionally to drum sander mode, but really only when I'm doing ingrain because the helical head does such a nice job on, you know, a variety of different hardwoods, but if I'm doing ingrain like a cutting board, I'll switch it over and... Cause it's an important point, you shouldn't be planing and grain cutting boards. It's another whole topic, but great application for the drum sander function. Yup, absolutely. And not like you showed in the video, it doesn't take much to switch it over from one mode to the other. So what I'll try to do is, you know, gang up two or three have two or three cutting boards, ready to go switch it over, run them through, and then switch it back to planing mode. Those are kind of the practical kind of workhorse applications. Probably the thing that I get the most giddy about with this tool is making custom molding. So I make, I build a lot of furniture, and I love being able to take a piece from the same flitch that I'm building the furniture from and make a piece of custom molding to match to grain and color match with the rest of the wood on the piece of furniture. And I've included that in all probably half dozen different pieces of furniture. And I just, it just never gets old when it gets to that point in the project, I just get really excited. I've also done custom crown molding for, I think, three different houses where they had some existing molding and then they did an addition or just remodeled and they wanted to match the molding. So I was able to send in a small piece of the molding to wood master, have them custom match the profile, send me the knives and run it through in the same species of wood and it's a perfect match. So it's with the trim. I like a couple of things out of this. One, the fact that you can get that grain and color match, 'cause you're cutting from the same... Yup. Even if it's not the same flitch. If I get in whatever, a hundred board feet and I use that for the project and for the molding, I should have good similarities there and then two, there are moldings that you just can't buy in certain species of wood. And so being able to produce that on your own is gonna be the way to go. So a question, I mean, so what we've got going here is a machine that planer, we can rip, we can make molding, drum sander. So a question I've heard a bunch of times is what does it take to get from one function to another, which is a great question. So the video that we did ahead of time on this product was taken us through the process of changing from one function to another, to help you understand that. So let's have a look at that video and give you that overview on the changeover. Let's have a look at changeovers and the Woodmaster. And specifically what I'm gonna do in this case is go from the planer where the way it's currently set up to the sanding head. Planar heads out, obviously. And I gotta say the instructions in the owner's manual for this are really, really, really, really good to walk you through this and it, you know, maybe it's not something you do every day. So having a really good owner's manual to refer to for the changeovers is huge. So now it's kind of second verse, same as the first. The difference is that with the planar head, the individual shafts come in from each side with the sanding drum, one accessory shaft, it's gonna carry the whole drum. So now we can have a look at getting the sanding drum in here. Once the accessory shaft is in then lock collars come back on the outside. And inside here, there's a set screw, an Allen screw that's gonna hold the sanding drum to the shaft. There we go, our sanding drummers' in place, shroud over the top. Now, let's look next at when we wanna go from one of these operations planing or sanding to using the molding head, gonna undo a bunch of what I just did. Next, we can get the molding head in there and this is gonna very repetitive to what you've already seen with the sanding drum, same accessory shaft but in this case, we engage the molding head. And from here really, you've seen a bunch of this already. We're gonna get keys here on the accessory shaft that allow me to lock the molding head in place, get the collars and a pulley re-installed out here on the outport end, put the belt back on, shroud over the top. And the molding head design. So transitions planar to sanding drum to molding head, great instructions and straightforward stuff once you've stepped through it a couple of times. So we looked at a bunch of changeover on the machine. One of the things that I did not do on that pre-roll video was the saw blades. And the reason I didn't is it's just so similar. Can you grab one of those guys? Yup. The accessory shaft still gets used, and then we slipped that in there. So this is gonna slip into the machine the same way you saw it happen for the molding head and you can space these however you want. So you can set up multiple heads in order to rip stuff, too. A great example, we were talking about earlier would be face frame stock. If you have miles of face frame to make, you could have two blades on this thing. So every one board you send through, you're getting multiple pieces cut to just the right width. Yeah, when you you use these, one thing I really noticed is because I think because it's such a small diameter blade and it's a good piece of carbide on there really sharp, but you don't get run out like you do on a bigger saw blade. So the cut quality you get is fantastic with this. Yeah, yeah. Now we do have a, we have a question from Clustin, which will be for you. What's the cost of a custom blade for the Woodmaster? So I think this is thrown back to when you said you had... Sure, yeah. To have molding knives made up. Yeah, it will depend on a couple things. One is, do you want carbide or high high-speed steel? I've only used high-speed steel. I, you know, unless you're running production, I don't think that there's probably, it's probably worth the additional expense for carbide, high-speed steel is very durable and I've had no issues with it staying plenty sharp. So depending on how you want to run it, if you run it on the shaft, you can run a double blade. I've only run a single blade but then the cost is per inch. So just straight per lineal inch of the knife. And I don't remember what the cost is, but they're really economical. I was surprised by how inexpensive they were, turnaround was really quick and they just did a great job. I mean, the, the finish on these things is superb. They're just polished. It's amazing to me that you can send in. I think that was a crazy cool thing that you can send in a piece of existing molding. Yeah. And say match this profile. So I think for somebody who's in a world of remodeling, that's huge. Absolutely. 'Cause we don't like as commonplace moldings, we don't see the big crown or base moldings today that we're going into houses pick a number, you know 50, a hundred years ago or more. So to be able to get those custom run is cool. Absolutely. A lot of people make a living with these, they'll buy one of these, put it in their garage and sell custom molding for just that application. Some, you know, some contractor that's doing, you know, work in an older home, it needs to custom match that piece. It's just a great application for a tool like that. So changeover simple. You saw it on the video and a lot, a lot of versatility in this machine, small footprint, lot of big stuff going on here.