Day 3191 Blade runner.

12th May 2026

We did something completely different today at John the wood’s barn.

I had come prepared with a rough model of the leg structure for the Michigan coffee table.

The top was still lying on the bench where we left it last week.

There was still the edge sanding to do, but it appeared the main order of the day was the planer. John tried to explain the problem, but he made no sense, I listened patiently, as you would a foreigner asking for directions, but it was making no sense. He then trotted off, ran a plank through the machine and showed me the result. There was a deep groove all the way along, then I understood the problem.

This had to be investigated, this piece of kit is the workhorse of the shop.

Together we removed the cowling exposing the helical cutter, I rotated it until I found the problem. One blade was missing, the attached screw was still there, and loose. It has unwound enough to be raised above the cutters causing the screw head to cut its own groove.

The mystery of where the blade went unsolved, possibly shattered, but now the cutters were exposed it was the perfect time to service it.

John went off to find the boxes of new blades whilst I started to loosen the screws.

The screws themselves were Torx head, a star shaped recess, so looking round for a T20 wench was the first challenge.

Some of the screws loosened easily, some not so.

These I marked so that I could try again after some penetration fluid could work its magic.

We did some work on the table edge, had our coffee and biscuits, then had another go at removing the stubborn fixings.

Working my way through the many Torx wrenches John had I found some newish ones, sometimes they wear and some of the star features break off, but these looked like new.

That’s what it needed, one by one they broke loose, the strain needed on some made me fart, not something I like to admit, but as you get older certain functions are linked together.

Anyway, with all the screws loosened, John returned with many small boxes of cutter blades.

Now each blade has four cutting edges, so normally the blade is rotated, but as it hadn’t been touched for years I thought it would be good to change them all and start again.

So that is what we did, I removed each one in turn replacing the blade, keeping an orientation dot in the same place each time. To speed the process up I had John working ahead removing the screws, but he kept tightening them, and I had to remind him which way they had to turn.

This was a long and arduous task, it felt like there were hundreds of screws, however, the very last screw fell out and disappeared into the wood chipping. Now I had to find it. I carefully searched through everything, almost ever piece wood chip, I could not believe that I couldn’t find it. I sent John off to look for a magnet, he was gone for ages and returned with nothing. By now every piece of wood chips was laid out on the floor, I was patting it like some eastern religious ritual, suddenly I found it, the little bastard was taunting me, I picked it up victorious, by then John had forgotten what I was looking for, I fixed the final blade in place. By now most of the day was gone, but it was fixed and ready to be used In earnest.

We had our final coffee, and a clean up, and I took John back home, my fingers oil stained and bleeding.