screaming planer

[Michael MacDonald]

I have a old house, and recently took off 25 6-foot treads and risers running up to the second floor. The original stairs were underneath (two parallel staircases.. the wall between had been removed). The old treads were so beat-up and didn't stain well, so I have made up new treads and risers to install. Anyway, the treads I removed are red oak... not sure how old... perhaps 30, 40, 50, 60 years? no way to tell. The point I am getting to is that the wood is old... and perhaps hard? really hard?

I have been removing staples and nails, and I scraped a bit of the dirt and varnish off. I had a chance to run the first board through the planer last night.

Holey moley! Not sure if this is right. DW735 seemed to get bogged down right away. If I take the smallest amount off, it screams louder than I have ever heard. Sometimes the board stops progressing and I have to pull it or lift up the cutter--I suppose this may be because the board is cupped a bit? One full turn of the handle is 1/16, I think, but it seems like I can't rotate the handle more than a 1/2 inch along its circumference without causing the planer blades to dig in as if I asked them to cut off a 1/2 inch of material. What kind of work-ethic is that?

Perhaps the blades are just dull? Maybe something wrong with my rollers? Or is this what I should suspect on a 6-foot-by-8-inch old red oak board that is cupped and still coated with varnish?

[Paul Greathouse]

Michael

You didn't state the condition of your Planer. Your problem could be a combination of things depending on how much use your planer has seen and what you have recently run through it.

Before getting a larger planer I used a 12" Delta. It was a little workhorse for what it was, but there were a couple of thing that would bog it down even when taking a light cut.

If you have previously run alot of pine, your rubber rollers could be covered with a thin layer of resin from the pine which would make them slick. If the rollers are slick they won't grab well. I had this problem a couple of times and cleaned the rollers with paint thinner.

The combination of the varnish finish that you mentioned and the cupped boards could be your problem. It could be that there's just not enough surface area for the rollers to catch due to the cupping and the area that they are contacting, is slick due to the varnish. If you have access to a Jointer, try creating one flat surface on the jointer first them run them through the planer. Doing so will probably make a big difference.

It could just be dull blades but more often if the planer is not feeding well on light passes it's probably due more to a slick roller or roller failing to make good contact.

[Michael MacDonald]

fair enough. the planer is pretty new. I have recently run white oak through it--and that turned out great. about 25 boards at 10" wide. I was taking 1/32 or 1/16 at a time on those passes. Prior to that, not much running through it. I just finished a Thien separator, and I was not able to use the planer much before due to chip build-up in my modest dust collector.

The rolller problem I suppose is explainable by the cupping and the varnish. Don't think I need to clean the rollers at this point--but that is a reasonable thing to check.

What really surprised me is that the planer is working so much harder than normal on the red oak... the sound difference from when I was running the white oak is significant. The difficulty I have in pulling it through the planer once the rollers stop working is surprising... I want to make sure I am not doing anything to harm the equipment at this point... I suppose the blades can be replaced for $50.... but wear & tear or outright damage beyond that would be a pain to fix...

I have 6 1/2 inch jointer... I can try to use that... the widest boards are 11 inches and the narrowest are 8 inches. I have read about the technique for doing this, but I figured I would first just try it on the planer and see how that turned out.

[Mikail Khan]

On my Delta 22-580 planer I used to get a significant noise reduction with new blades.

MK

[Myk Rian]

It didn't take me too long before I got tired of the noise my 735 made, so I put a Byrd Shelix in it. What a difference that made.

[Steve Bracken]

fair enough. the planer is pretty new. I have recently run white oak through it--and that turned out great. about 25 boards at 10" wide. I was taking 1/32 or 1/16 at a time on those passes. Prior to that, not much running through it. I just finished a Thien separator, and I was not able to use the planer much before due to chip build-up in my modest dust collector.

The rolller problem I suppose is explainable by the cupping and the varnish. Don't think I need to clean the rollers at this point--but that is a reasonable thing to check.

What really surprised me is that the planer is working so much harder than normal on the red oak... the sound difference from when I was running the white oak is significant. The difficulty I have in pulling it through the planer once the rollers stop working is surprising... I want to make sure I am not doing anything to harm the equipment at this point... I suppose the blades can be replaced for $50.... but wear & tear or outright damage beyond that would be a pain to fix...

I have 6 1/2 inch jointer... I can try to use that... the widest boards are 11 inches and the narrowest are 8 inches. I have read about the technique for doing this, but I figured I would first just try it on the planer and see how that turned out.

If the boards are cupped, then flattening the first face with the jointer is the way to go. Once that is done, the other side can be run through the planer to remove the crown.

A planer can't true up a cupped board. It pushes down so hard that it ends up flattening the board with the rollers, which then get planed, and springs back to cupped when the board emerges.

To *true up* a board:

Joint one edge.
Rip the other edge parallel.
Flatten one face on Jointer
Plane other face parallel.

There are a few variations on this, but once you have the principles established in your mind, then it becomes relatively easy.

Hope this helps

[george wilson]

Also,try paste wax on the table. Make sure it NEVER gets on the feed rollers.

[Paul McGaha]

It sounds to me like the boards being cupped might be the root of the problem.

PHM

[Michael MacDonald]

A planer can't true up a cupped board. It pushes down so hard that it ends up flattening the board with the rollers, which then get planed, and springs back to cupped when the board emerges.

I totally agree... I didn't think that the board was very cupped when I started out. After the first few passes, I noticed that the planer is not really flattening this board because the cut marks show that the cutting is either happening on the edges or the on the center in some parts of the board... If the rollers flattened it, then it would be planing evenly, right?

My initial appraoch was to plane it a bit and take a look at it... I still have a few boards to go for nail removal, and I want to plane them all at once... but I got the jump on this board because I was eager to see how it turned out... Then all this stuff started to happen and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it...

[Michael MacDonald]

Also,try paste wax on the table. Make sure it NEVER gets on the feed rollers.

good point... this was actually the first thing I did--raised the planer up and waxed the table... I forgot to mention it... didn't change much, though.

[Michael MacDonald]

It sounds to me like the boards being cupped might be the root of the problem.

PHM

meaning that might be causing the sound and the bogging down, along with the slow or stopped roller feeding? OK. Maybe test tonight if I get a chance... just found out I have to make one more new stair tread... one more example of measure, cut, measure, curse, buy more.

[Gordon Harner]

Is it possible that the treads, due to wear, vary in thickness and therefore your cutting depth also varies. You may be taking off very little material in some places and a lot in others as the material travels through the machine.

[Michael MacDonald]

Is it possible that the treads, due to wear, vary in thickness and therefore your cutting depth also varies. You may be taking off very little material in some places and a lot in others as the material travels through the machine.

the treads refers to the rollers? I will have to think about how this works. I assume they have a constant pressure downward. The bed and the cutter head are a constant distance apart. It could be that the board is not consistent thickness as well, I suppose... but heck, what else would a planer before than to correct that problem?

One odd thing I noted was that I would run the board three times at the EXACT SAME THICKNESS... no change whatsoever... and it would still make sounds like it was cutting a 1/4 inch or so... I thought that was odd.

One thing that occurs to me is that I should first plane the cupped-inward-side down... the bow should be up and the hollow should be down... so no rocking. that perhaps was what was causing me problems as well...

jeez... give an amateur a new toy and see what you get?

[Caspar Hauser]

'The treads' would refer to the wood you are dressing. Years of feet having worn hollows into them.

[Michael MacDonald]

'The treads' would refer to the wood you are dressing. Years of feet having worn hollows into them.

ah... somehow I missed that connection. treads. right. now it all makes sense. All I could picture was belt treads--like those on a tank--in place of rollers. Funny that without knowing, I actually mentioned that in the same paragraph as my obtuse question. Perhaps I need a nap.

[Josiah Bartlett]

Old floor boards seem to get work hardened, from a combination of years of being walked on(compressing the fibers), finish soaking in and hardening, and from dirt and grit being ground into the pores. If I'm planing old floorboards I like to knock the finish off with a belt sander first, but even then they are pretty tough to plane.

I've found that my Delta 22-580 develops more power when it is plugged right into a 20 amp outlet rather than trying to run it off even a 25 foot 12 gauge extension cord. The motors in portable planers seem to be really sensitive to line voltage sag.

[Ray McCullie]

Maybe you should try sanding them down a little first. I've seen Norm use a sander on NYW. It's like a planer but instead of blades it has two cylinders, each with a different grit of paper. Makes cleaning up old board easier or so he says.

Maybe if you clean up the boards a little with a belt sander it'll make them easier to plane. Of course they could be hardened to a point where they are unworkable. Just remember the wood you get today almost isn't even the same species as old growth wood. Most modern lumber is cut from immature trees and the wood just doesn't have the same properties.

Good luck, sounds like you'll need it.

[Michael MacDonald]

I will try sanding them down instead... I have a HF belt sander, and I understand these devices have tenuous lives--so I expect I might be visiting HF with a dead sander soon given how these boards fight against being worked.

Actually, the first board I was trying to plane was a riser--so no actual foot traffic on it. I would expect the treads to be even harder to mill.

I put this task aside for a couple of days while I worked on a few others things. Last night I had the need to plane a 6-foot, 13-inch-wide QS white oak glue-up--same as all the other new stair treads and risers I have been making. I wasn't taking off more than 1/64, but immediately the planer dug in again. Ended up with a shallow concave cut about one inch in from the edge of on the board... hmmm.

Tried it again, and got the same result. The only way I could get the board to run through was to raise up the height. Then the rollers sent it through, but the blade did not touch it... As soon as I had the blades make the slightest contact, the whole machine got bogged down.

So I opened up the planer and checked out the blades. Now my eyesight is not so great, and I wasn't confident by looking or touching them that they were more dull than the other side... but for kicks I thought I would flip the blades to use the other side and see if that made a difference--and it did. The new QSWO board turned out fine...

So in the end, I think the old riser was perhaps just too tough for the blades--the blades either dulled quickly or perhaps were bent slightly. Is this really possible? I don't want to make a foolish conclusion, but I had heard that wood hardened over a long time (aside from compression), and perhaps these treads and risers are just rock solid now... I hadn't seen any problems with planer prior to this riser. Can't wait to see how the TS deals with them.

Is it possible for wood to become unworkable because of this condition? I would rather think that the problem arises from some I did wrong (not cleaning up the varnish, planing the wrong side such that the board rocked, taking too much bite in the first pass)

I want to use the red oak... not give up on it. But I don't want it to kill my planer either...

[Michael MacDonald]

I found this:

http://www.woodworking.com/ww/Article/Does_Age_Make_Wood_Harder__5887.aspx

these guys say no. my treads were hard to begin with. Doesn't rule out compression as a factor, but age itself as a factor is contradicted...

[Lee Schierer]

Before you plane any more boards wax the lower table with paste wax. It will help the boards slide better. You may need to re-wax several times to keep the boards moving well. It makes all the difference in the world on my planer when you wax the table.

[Michael MacDonald]

Lee -- I only did it once... I will put more wax on and let it dry more this time... certainly can't hurt. Hadn't occured to me before, but perhaps the finish was grabbing on the table.