# Accu-Head spiral cutter head for planers/jointers



## jeffreythree (Jan 9, 2008)

What an interesting experience this has been . First of all, it is an awesome product in use. In my Ryobi AP1301 planer, it is quieter, quicker, can take a bigger bite, and works through hard stuff much easier. Tested on a piece of curly willow(pictured) with a big old knot since planers hate all that changing grain direction, a piece of hard maple, and a piece of ipe. Overall, it seems to be able to take 2-4 times more material off per pass over the stock blades and take on stuff I would never send through it before. If they had one to fit my jointer, I would buy it in a minute.

Now the bad stuff. I ordered it and it just showed up one day from Steel City(not Accu-Head), no email or anything until a week after when they asked if it happened to show up. The extra cutters showed up seperately a while later. Strange way of doing business. Next, it came with some jacked up threads for the pulley nut but tough to tell if it was shipping damage(UPS broke the plywood box it was screwed into on the gear side of things). Third, several body parts tend to clinch up when starting up sharp objects that spin at a high rate of speed that YOU put back together with no instructions . If you are not sure of your mechanical abilities, you may want to try something that does not risk whirling sharp steel around the shop. http://www.accu-head.com/

Before planed by a big Delta 15" planer









After cleaned up most of the tear out from before









Shavings from new head


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## ACP (Jan 24, 2009)

Thanks for posting this Jeff, I've been curious about Accu-Head too. I was looking to upgrade my Ridgid TP1300 to one if they were worth it but I couldn't find much on them. At $250 I think I'll save my pennys for a bigger floor model one from Grizzly someday. I love my TP1300 but it is getting old and I'd hate to drop the $$$ on it and then have it die. Please let us know how the cutters hold up.


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## Rodango (Jun 22, 2020)

I'm curious if anyone has had long-term success (or failure) with the Accu-head. It's now the end of 2020, more than a decade since this was posted. The choices now (looking for my JJ6 early model Jet jointer, and new Dewalt 735 planer,) seem to be between LUX 3 and Byrd Shelix. There were others but they dried up even while I've looked to buy - Elaphas was one. There were at least a couple that were found on Amzn and eB*, now nothing. 

The two, Lux and Byrd, cost nearly the same, and I can't find much difference - the Lux costs slightly more, and it has a "black oxidized" rust resistant finish, torx screws (better?), counterbored cutters, and different (better?) method of seating the cutters (to seat more positively?)

The Byrd cutters have radiused cutters, both heads use a helical arrangement of cutters, which have the cutting edges at an angle to the path of the wood through the planer giving a 'shearing' action to the cut. A chief complaint or argument for straight cutter knives is that the many knives each make a slightly 'scalloping' cut that at worst, really, is a 'ghost' pattern. Reports say it planes, scrapes or sands right off. That may seem to add another step, but if you look, straight knives on planers and jointers leave a pattern of their own. On well tuned machines with freshly sharpened blades, it manifests as a series of parallel ridges that are perpendicular to the path of wood through the machine and may go all the way across the width of the wood. Dull knives are probably worse in either case - straight knives or helical cutters - as are deeper cuts for each pass.


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## Tool Agnostic (Aug 13, 2017)

All other things equal, I would be curious about the availability and cost of cutters long term. How much do the cutters cost? Can you get compatible cutters from third parties? Will you be able to find replacement cutters in five years? Ten years?


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