1965 Powermatic Planer Chatter

[Elliott Wilson]

Bought a “new” old PM160 for $500 a little while ago. Finally got around to replacing belts/blades, slicking tables and general cleaning so I can start using the beast but my boards are coming out with SERIOUS chatter marks.
all my blades are within 3/1000’s of each other (best I could do without the grinder). I already lowered the pressure bar and the feed roller is as low as it can go. Passing thinner stock you can just hear it bouncing around. Any of you old goats know what I should wrench on to fix this?

[Matt Day]

Not sure I’d consider myself an old goat just yet, but make sure you have sufficient pressure from the rollers. Chatter is likely because the board is moving up and down and not held tight to the bed.

[Bill Orbine]

Have you gone to Vintage Machinery and downloaded manuals for the planer? There are a least two manuals for you planer and you can make sure you have the machine set up to specs.

Offhandedly, I would look at feed rate(too high), table rollers, pressure rollers ( too little or too much... Needs to be right) as well as other items.

There also a forum at Vintage Machinery and these guys know their stuff!

[Matt Day]

The forum is at OWWM.org, machine information manuals photos etc are on Vintage Machinery.

[Richard Coers]

You might have the blades too far out of the head. Every planer I've set up, you can stall the feed with lowering the pressure bar. Also make sure something is not hanging up with the pressure bar, and that the face of the pressure bar is flat

[Darcy Warner]

Lower pressure bar until board hangs up on it. Raise up until it just passes. That's the key part of the machine that keeps chatter from happening

[Joe Jensen]

I agree, your knives are too far out of the cutterhead. the pressure bar should be able to stop stock from feeding. I keep mine just high enough to keep stock feeding.

[Bradley Gray]

I agree. If you can bottom out the pressure bar, you need to have less knife out of the cutterhead.

[Kevin Jenness]

Here's a link to the manual http://vintagemachinery.org/pubs/655/824.pdf