Dave Zellers
03-17-2013, 10:13 PM
Here's the situation:
Ideally, you want the four corners of the top (head), the cast iron that holds all the moving blades and rollers, to be the same distance from the cast iron bed. This makes total sense because if it is off side to side, and you set the knives the same distance off the cutter head using a jig, then the thickness will be off from one side to the other.
But what if it is only off front to back? IOW, mine is parallel to the bed side to side, but the back (outfeed) is higher than the front by perhaps 1/16". The instructions for setting the rollers reference everything off the bed using feeler gauges so why would this matter?
I'm getting ready to start our kitchen and I'm willing to spend a few hours tuning up this baby from being pretty good, to being close to perfect. For some reason, fiddling with the gears underneath spooks me and if aligning the rollers and knives to be the correct distance off the bed can achieve perfection, is there any reason why I should fiddle with the gears to lower the back of the head?
I'm sure I'm already getting some eye rolls from those who have been doing this for years and understand it but it's kind of new to me. I bought this planer used 2 years ago or so and have just used it as is with pretty good results. But it clearly would benefit from a tune up, so I can boil down all my wordiness to this, for those who have persevered this far: Do I really need to adjust the head to be coplanar (given it's only out front to back) before I adjust the knives and rollers?
Ideally, you want the four corners of the top (head), the cast iron that holds all the moving blades and rollers, to be the same distance from the cast iron bed. This makes total sense because if it is off side to side, and you set the knives the same distance off the cutter head using a jig, then the thickness will be off from one side to the other.
But what if it is only off front to back? IOW, mine is parallel to the bed side to side, but the back (outfeed) is higher than the front by perhaps 1/16". The instructions for setting the rollers reference everything off the bed using feeler gauges so why would this matter?
I'm getting ready to start our kitchen and I'm willing to spend a few hours tuning up this baby from being pretty good, to being close to perfect. For some reason, fiddling with the gears underneath spooks me and if aligning the rollers and knives to be the correct distance off the bed can achieve perfection, is there any reason why I should fiddle with the gears to lower the back of the head?
I'm sure I'm already getting some eye rolls from those who have been doing this for years and understand it but it's kind of new to me. I bought this planer used 2 years ago or so and have just used it as is with pretty good results. But it clearly would benefit from a tune up, so I can boil down all my wordiness to this, for those who have persevered this far: Do I really need to adjust the head to be coplanar (given it's only out front to back) before I adjust the knives and rollers?