Steel City 13” planer features helical cutterhead

Steel City Tool Works introduced a patented helical cutterhead to its 13” portable planer, the first company to include that feature as standard fare. The 2” diameter cutterhead has 26 indexable HSS (high-speed steel) inserts, with each knife having four cutting sides.

“It’s a much less expensive style to do a helical-style head,” says Scott Box, president of Steel City Tool Works. “The segments are indexed so you stack them together in a shaft. If you get into a problem like on a Byrd head or one of the other Shelix-type heads, when you tear the seat up, you’ve torn the entire cutterhead up. On this, you can actually move that segment if you run into a problem and put it back together and go on your merry way.”

The Steel City 13” Deluxe Portable Planer with patented helical cutterhead, model 40200H, is priced at $599.

Contact: Steel City Tool Works, 901 Dashiel St., Murfreesboro, TN 37129. Tel: 877-724-8665. www.steelcitytoolworks.com

— Brian Caldwell