My DW735 tried to kill me

[Jeff Bratt]

Well I was aiming for 3/8 " thick, which I think is kosher, but ya, the pieces were only about 4" long along the grain, about 6" wide, which is why I butted two together and taped them down, hoping they'd act as one piece... worked for a while, at least, but just bad planning on my part...or bad planing...

If you must run shorts through the planer, you can attach temporary extensions - at least 8-10" long - to a short piece to run it through the planer. (This also gets rid of snipe, for any length piece.) Still, you're better off planing first, then sawing the pieces to size afterward.
PlanerExtensions.JPG

[Bob Daniel]

You can attach temporary extensions - at least 8-10" long - to a short piece to run it through the planer.

Interesting!! Good to know, thanks!!

[Peter Quinn]

Ya, um, the kickback was my fault, I was getting cute... I had some small box pieces, too small to run through on their own, so I carpet taped two of them to a larger board. Just needed to take off a sixteenth or so, and I was doing it about a sixty-fourth at a time... first three passes worked like a charm... "just one more should do it" I sez to myself... then the aforementioned BANG and you know the rest...

Is there a safe way to run small pieces through?

So it didn't really try to kill you, you tried to choke it with small parts and it fought back! I'd say NO, there is no safe way to run parts below the minimum length through. Generally for a given planer at least one of the feed rollers needs to be touching the stock at all times, and that pretty much sets the minimum length specified in the manual. The blades are lifting up and pushing backwards, and that as you have seen can get ugly.

I've had better luck with a drum sander or a jack plane on very small parts that need some adjustment. The drum sander pushes backwards, but it doesn't lift up like a planer so the tape thing works well, and the feed rollers allow much shorter material to pass the head anyway.

If you are going to plane shorts, the safest thing for you to do is have an assistant feed while you catch. Set them up with a baseball catchers uniform or hockey goalie gear, but don't tell them why.

[Bob Daniel]

Not sure even the goalie outfit would do it... that sucker was movin...