The Best Machine for Slab Resurfacing and Finishing
The Wood Wizz Timber Surfacing and Finishing machines were invented by a man who already knew the problems of cutting and finishing wood. Les Owen was a builder who liked to work with timber slabs and burls, making furniture in his limited spare time.
Les tried a multitude of hand tools, thicknessers, planers, sanders of all descriptions and everything else in between that he could find to level and dress timber to a high quality finish. All of these tools were very time consuming, costly, and the finished product was less than satisfactory. He was also keen to eliminate the amount of air borne dust, noise, and the mess associated with using these hand tools when working with wood.
In the mid 90’s Les gave up looking for a suitable dedicated wood working machine and set out on a mission to design his own machine that would take the place of a multitude of tools. It had to be quick, quiet, user friendly, as dust free as possible and a machine that would give a high quality finish on any kind of wood, including burls, slabs and recycled timber. Most of all, because of the limited time available for his hobby, Les needed each woodwork project to be completed in an allocated time frame. After many prototypes and various configurations, Les came up with three unique inventions that achieved all of the above and more. Mission accomplished!
After patents were put in place Les decided to test the market. In 1998 he demonstrated one of his inventions, the Radial Arm Timber Surfacing and Finishing machine, at the Timber and Working with Wood Show in Melbourne. The response from wood workers was overwhelming.
After this event, Les’s career path took a new direction from builder to manufacturer of the Wood Wizz Wood Surfacing and Finishing machinery. He went on to manufacture his other designs with the support of his wife Lillian and his family. Now they have three different Surfacing and Finishing machines on the market.
Today the buyers/operators of these Australian designed and manufactured Wood Wizz machines, can testify to the true value of these amazing and versatile machines and to the high quality finish that is achieved on all kinds of timber slabs, burls and recycled wood.
It gives Les great satisfaction to see that woodworkers using these brilliant low budget Wood Wizz machines can now produce furniture of the highest quality. Woodworkers can be proud of their achievements and can turn their efforts and skills into profit. With pride these woodworkers are able to say, “I made that.”
Wood Wizz Machinery Pty Ltd is located in Albury, New South Wales, Australia.
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Testimonials
“We have been running our 7m x 2.2m Wood Wizz now for a good 2 years without one single issue. It is without a doubt the single most valuable machine in our workshop. We have machined everything from Jarrah, Marri, Sheoak, Salmon Gum, Wandoo, Blackbutt and 4000 year old ancient kauri with our Wood Wizz and it has handled this wide variety of timbers with ease. It gives us a dead flat surface to work with every time, which is something we could not achieve with other machinery, especially on the larger slabs we use in our furniture designs. It is very simple to operate and virtually maintenance free. We would be lost without it”
“Hats off to Les for creating such a magic machine. We specialize in wide slab and burl tables and what a mission it used to be to get them flat, let alone of uniform thickness. Now the job gets done to perfection whilst the boys are having smoko, it still amazes me. Recently I purchased 4 Marri burl slabs 2.4m round hacked off the tree with a Stihl 090 varying from 100mm to 70mm in thickness. I rang Les asking for a 400mm extension. “No problem”, he said. It was over in a few days and with just 1 hour rejigging the machine track, I can now level up to 2.4m wide, that’s ridiculous! This would have been a 16 hour electric buzzer job in the old days and now it’s done to perfection automatically with a few minutes supervision every 20 mins through the course of an afternoon.
Can’t thank you enough Les!!!”
