dewalt 735 planer...jammed heigth adjustment

[Mark Vaughn]

Is there anyone that owns a dewalt 735 planer that has or has had a problem with the crank being really hard to turn? I don't know if its just dust stuck in there or what but i've tried blowing it out and wd 40 and it still is just as hard to turn. i'm afraid it might be damaged but i don't know how.. thanks for any suggestions

[Brad Townsend]

Forgive me if this sounds stupid. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, (as I did this once). You aren't trying to lower it past whatever your down limit is set to are you? Once I went to lower mine and was scratching my head for a few minutes until I realized my son had set the down limit on 3/4" and I was trying to take it lower.:rolleyes:

[Brian D Anderson]

Forgive me if this sounds stupid. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence, (as I did this once). You aren't trying to lower it past whatever your down limit is set to are you? Once I went to lower mine and was scratching my head for a few minutes until I realized my son had set the down limit on 3/4" and I was trying to take it lower.:rolleyes:

Don't feel bad . . . I was thinking the same thing. And in fact, did the same thing. Took me a few seconds to figure out why mine wouldn't go any lower.

If that's not it, then it might need to be taken apart and cleaned up. Can't help you there though.

-Brian

[Greg Muller]

I had the same problem. After cleaning it very well, it still did not move. I ended up taking it to the local DeWalt service center and they found that one of the big chrome threaded posts had worked itself loose (almost unnoticeable since it was then wedged) and rotated just enough to stop the head from moving. It took them about 30 minutes to fix it (no, I don't know how, sorry) and they also put some new knives in it for me. He said he sees one like that about 3 or 4 times a year.

They tech said usually the head sticks because of sawdust jammed into the gearing and threaded posts, so I would try cleaning it real well first.

I wish I could help you more, but the good news is that they corrected the problem for me free of charge. I did pay for the new knives however...

Greg

[richard dombroski]

Had a problem with sawdust building up in side in gears. Hard part was finding source as it was a very little saw dust over a long time. Turned out to be a bad molding on part of flange on blower housing

[James Suzda]

Is there anyone that owns a dewalt 735 planer that has or has had a problem with the crank being really hard to turn? I don't know if its just dust stuck in there or what but i've tried blowing it out and wd 40 and it still is just as hard to turn. i'm afraid it might be damaged but i don't know how.. thanks for any suggestions
You wouldn't happen to have an older model would you? Maybe you have one that the gears have to be replaced (free) from DeWalt. I don't remember what serial numbers fell into the bracket but mine was 200420 and mine was under the recall.
Something to check out.

[Jesse Cloud]

I had a similar problem with my aged DW733 planer. Gots lots of good advice here on the creek, tried it all to no avail. My low cost solution was to simply leave the sled (piece of 3/4 melamine with a cleat that catches the infeed table) on all the time. Works fine under those circumstances.

[Rick Thom]

I bought a used but quite new 735 last fall. It was REALLY tight to turn height adjustment. Pulled it all apart to see cavity was full of saw dust and chains were jammed full to the point that they wouldn't engage the sprockets. The chain tensioner was slightly deformed as well as a result. I believe the previous owner had a bad habit of running it periodically connected to a dc vac hose but didn't bother turning the dc on for small jobs. This would result in the hose filling up and eventually filling the cavity.
I suggest you pull the cover and have a look.. it's a straight forward job. If you need to do ANYTHING with the chain and sprockets, mark the sprocket dogs and the chains and take a pic so you can put them back exactly as they were. They are factory set to ensure the planer carriage travels up and down horizontally and parallel with the bed. If you turn a sprocket a few teeth one way or the other without the chain engaged, that sprocket elevation will be different from the other 3.
Oh, btw, worked perfectly once it was all cleaned up.

[Wayne Cannon]

Stupid? I just encountered this today! It probably took me 5 minutes to figure out what was wrong.