planner question

[Evan Shea]

I was given a woodmaster 612 planner that appears to be in good shape, but when I tried to use it last weekend I was getting a lot of snipe on the first and last six inches of each board. Is there any way to fix this? I did call the company to see if I could get a book for it but they told me they have not made this planner for a long time.

thanks for any help

[keith ouellette]

Those are supposed to be good machines. Did it come with the sanding drum and the molding bar or did you just get the planer? Does that one have dust collection port? I think some didn't.

I would take it apart a little and make sure you don't have any chips crammed in someplace.

[Evan Shea]

yes I do have all of the other attachments but I have not got around to messing with any of them. I would like to get it turning out nice flat stock first. This is my first planner so I did not know if there were any adjustments that might get me headed in the right direction.

[Joe Chritz]

There is nearly always a little snipe. I was/am getting just enough on my 15" Grizzly to see but it only measures about .005 or so. Not enough to worry about.

There are several adjustments that can be made but I am not familiar with that model to know what all it has. The big ones, make sure the blades are set correctly and that the tables are coplanar. If it has bed rollers check those and the pressure bar/feed rollers.

A planar looks simple but there is actually a fair amount of set up in getting one running good.

Good luck

Joe

[glenn bradley]

Snipe occurs when your material enters the planer cutting area at a slightly upward angle and exits at a downward sloping angle. One or both may occur. The general fix is to elevate the outer tips of your infeed and/or outfeed tables for shorter pieces or to properly support the material at the infeed and outfeed via roller stands or whatever.

Here's an amazingly exaggerated picture of what happens when the material engages the cutter in an uncontrolled manner resulting in snipe.

80652

On my De Walt I have the outer tips of my infeed and outfeed tables about a dime's thickness higher than the platen (nicknamed the ten cent solution by someone around here). I get snipe so seldom, it really surprises me anymore. When it does happen I am usually running my planer sled for face jointing and have not adjusted the roller stand correctly as the sled and its payload get heavy. Or I am doing very long stock (again with improper support) and the leverage causes the ends to drop. Try it I think you'll see an improvement.