1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: A New Tool–MiniMax FS35 Jointer/Planer!

The more cabinetry I do, the more I’m realizing the limitations of my Shopsmith combination woodworking machine. While the Shopsmith bandsaw, 12″ disk sander, and horizontal boring and shaping functions are excellent, the jointer–at only 4″ wide, with a 28″ table–is simply too small for the job. I’ve been scanning craigslist for months and missed a couple of good machines, but then a MiniMax FS35–a beast of a combination 14″ jointer and thickness planer–showed up in Baltimore during the week before Christmas. The seller wasn’t especially good at communication, and it seemed as if it had sold…then it was still available, but only for the full asking price…then there was flexibility in the price. By Saturday morning, the eve of Christmas Eve, I’d already made the trip from the house to the boatyard when the seller sent me his address. The heater on the boat had just started warming up the salon when I shut it all down and hit the road for Baltimore. I ended up buying the MiniMax, loading it into my truck, and taking it down to my house in Southern Maryland. For the second time in two months, a whole weekend went by without anything getting done on the Roamer. But this machine will make it that much easier to do cabinet face frames in the near future.

800lbs of fun

Because it was unclear if the machine was still for sale, I’d left the house for the boatyard without bring straps or a cover. Fortunately, I’ve always got 1/2″ and 3/4″ line in the back of the truck. The seller had a loading dock, which is ~50″ high–14″ higher than my unloaded truck bed– so we “went Egyptian” and used scraps of lumber and plywood to make a ramp to slide the machine into the truck. The loading operation went surprisingly smoothly.

Taking heavy bits off the top

I used my engine hoist to lift the planer beds off the machine, one by one.

Both jointer beds off

That 14″ cutterhead is the biggest I’ve ever seen. With the jointer table in place, you can true up to 13-3/4″ wide solid stock from the top side (Model FS35 = 35cm =13.75″). The thickness planer bed is below the cutter head, and it can handle lumber up to 9-1/2″ thick. This is a beast of a machine.

The paint’s not in bad shape for an old machine

Planer feed roller drive wheel has a dent where it was left engaged

Fortunately, the dent in the rubber drive wheel doesn’t seem to affect the feed roller function.

Time for the big lift out of the truck bed

My Harbor Freight engine hoist has been one of the greatest tools I’ve bought from them. Well worth the money.

After lifting the MiniMax out of the truck, I had to decide how to get it into the workshop. If I go through the garage, there’s a big step down into the workshop out back, which would mean more ramp building. Instead, I decided to load it onto a mini trailer and pull it around back with my Craftsman garden tractor. First gear at idle speed, and within a couple of minutes it was in the shop.

Reassembled in my workshop

10 seconds to convert from jointer to planer

Brand new carbide-tipped knives

So, now I’ve got a machine big enough to joint the boards I’ll be using for upcoming cabinetry. Because the MiniMax is down at my house, I’ll have to cut lengths of mahogany lumber slightly oversize for whatever I’m going to make, bring them from the tent to the house, joint and plane to thickness, then finish up machining the wood back on the boat. I predict there will be some frustration along the way, but not nearly as much as trying to use the little 4″ Shopsmith jointer with its tiny little bed and fence.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: More on the Galley Pantry