Planer Sled In Use

[glenn bradley]

I received some construction lumber that had been left out in the weather. It's ugly but, its free. Planer Sleds come up in discussion now and again. As I had reason to use mine I thought I would post.

The lumber and the sled height combined were just a bit outside my little planer's capacity. I took off about an 1/8" before I could get started:

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Here's the planer and a shot of the adjuster cleat. The screw is hand tightened. It is just there to keep everythin where it should be while passing through the planer:

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I chalk the surface to check my progress:

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All clean. Just remove the sled, flip the material and make the faces are parallel, joint an edge and I've got some free lumber for prototypes or other odd jobs:

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[Kent A Bathurst]

Glenn - very clever. I especially like the abrasive on the supports and wedges.

I don't understand sleds well - help me out - what is the tie-down (??) running length-wise? Purpose? Attachment?

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

I don't understand sleds well - help me out - what is the tie-down (??) running length-wise? Purpose? Attachment?

Kent - that is just a bungee cord (or something like it), that fits into dados on the top of the support pieces. It keeps all the support pieces "in place" when not being used.

[glenn bradley]

John's got it; 5 foot sled, 4 foot bungee and screw hooks from Lowe's. This is Keith Rust's design right out of FWW magazine. Here's (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=58735) my thread on making it a couple years ago. Well worth the afternoon of effort.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

Thanks for the pics Glen. and nice work.

putting the abrasive tape on the top of the wedges is genius. I had problems with my wedges moving, so I went with a set-screw setup instead.

[Mike Watts]

I just built one of these sleds this weekend and it worked great. Just one caution. I tried using it with just supporting the infeed and outfeed by hand and not using the roller stands. It took several passes to get the pressure right to keep the sled from drooping as it is fairly heavy. Next time I will go to the time and effort of using roller stands even for one board to avoid the rounding you get with the droop.