Wood-working mechanism

Abstract

Mechanism is provided for grooving or planing wood products either lengthwise or crosswise. Such grooving may be preparatory to the interdigital end to end interfitting of work pieces, commonly referred to as finger-jointing, or to simple planing which involves the continuous, uniform smoothing of a surface from end to end throughout its entire width, or to uniform longitudinal or transverse slotting. In any of these operations the cutting blade edges become dull and require resharpening from time to time. Conventionally the outer face of the blade which confronts the work is ground away for sharpening, and this has the unfortunate consequence of shortening the blade and thereby reducing the depth of cut. In accordance with the present invention this difficulty is overcome. The blade is formed with parallel, upwardly and forwardly sloping inner and outer faces, and the blade is sharpened by evenly grinding away the forward face of the blade. By providing adjustable means on a blade carrying wheel for wedging the blade forward on an outward slope as far as possible, a blade which has had its forward face evenly ground away can be caused to pick up where it left off--to-wit, to cut to exactly the same depth as before resharpening.