– Does the idea of spending a few hundred dollars make you cringe?Traditional knives can save you several hundred dollars compared to spiral cutter head. – Do you do a lot of face jointing? Face jointing is quieter with spiral cutter heads, and produces a superior surface.
– Do you use your jointer for multiple hours each week? Heavy use is a good indicator that spiral might be a good fit. Is a spiral cutter head right for you? If you are thinking about this upgrade, the following simple table might help you weigh out the trade-offs. And at that point it becomes a science project rather than a meaningful measure of woodworking precision or productivity, which causes me to lose interest.ĭecisions, Decisions. In practice however, when applying a slow feed rate and a shallow cut the surfaces produced on figured stock by each style cutter head are nearly perfect to the naked eye, so it is difficult to substantiate a claim that one is better than the other without employing some level of magnification. In theory this shearing action should provide a superior finish, just as it does with a sheer cut on a hand plane. Helix cutter heads on the other hand operate more like a sheer or skew cut taken with a hand plane, as the cutters are positioned at an angle to the feed rate. Although I don’t own a sound level meter so I can’t quantify this, the difference to my ears is pretty dramatic. Quieter. The spiral cutter heads operate much more quietly than knife-based cutter heads. Plus, since the inserts are made of carbide, the likelihood of getting nicks in the cutters goes way down in the first place. With spiral cutter heads, you simply rotate as described above and you are back in business. This presents either a cost factor, hassle, or both. Minimal disruption from nicks in knives. With high speed steel knives, if you nick one of your blades, you either have to remove the blades and sharpen the set, or try to slide the knives so that the nicked portions of the blade no longer align.
Of all the factors to consider with spiral cutter heads, this one appeals to me the most, as I am not a fan of swapping knives in a jointer.
Setting knives can be frustrating. This can take a while, and can lead to inconsistent results in getting the knives consistently set to the perfect height. In my opinion they are superior to traditional knife-based cutterheads in nearly every respect, and the question of whether it makes sense for an individual to purchase one comes down to whether the incremental cost is worth it to that particular woodworker, given their specific requirements.To evaluate whether or not it is worth the money to you, here are some of the key benefits to consider:
Many manufacturers now offer this as an option that can be factory installed in their jointers when initially purchased, and they are also available as a retrofit that you can install yourself.
This same technology is available for other tools as well, such as planers, shapers, and moulders, but since the purchasing criteria may be different for these applications, I will focus on the use of spiral cutterheads in jointers for the purposes of this article.Spiral cutterheads are considered an upgrade for a jointer, and generally carry a premium of $300 to $1,700 depending upon the size of your cutterhead. Small square carbide cutters are placed in close proximity to one another along a machined spiral pattern in a steel head. It is a newer design that uses the concept of insert tooling rather than traditional straight knives installed in the cutterhead. Nope, that’s certainly not your grandpa’s jointer cutterhead.