Planer Adjustments

[Rob Holcomb]

Recently, I had to do some adjustments to my planer (Grizzly G0453) after I started having troubles. Wood wouldn’t feed through causing deep gouges in my work and I had excessive snipe. After making adjustments to the infeed and outfeed rollers, the bed rollers, chip breaker, roller spring tension, lubing, adding gear oil, checking belt tension and waxing the table, everything is working as it should. I started to wonder though, how often things come out of adjustment? I’m a weekend warrior for the most part and don’t use my planer nearly as much as some of you do. For those of you that have planers, how often do you have to make adjustments to your planer to keep things in good working condition?

[David Ragan]

Hi Rob, am not familiar with your Griz, but I have been lucky, I guess cause the DW735 has not given me a bit of trouble in the 7 years of hobby service. Put Shelix on it recently, and works even better now. Grizzly seems like the kind of Corporation that would respond to you in a meaningful way with your question.

Your question seems worthwhile in that there might be some kind of 'sentinel event' that is very sensitive for the machine needing service-besides a ruined piece of stock.

Sounds like you did a great job and got to know your machine really well, which is always a wise investment of your time.

If you do talk with Grizzly, please let us know what they say.

[Paul Murphy]

The better a machine is built, the longer it will maintain adjustment.

All planers are adjusted relative to the cutting circle, so if you adjust your machine perfectly today and then tomorrow change your knives and adjust the knives to a new cutting circle, your machine is out of adjustment again.

[glenn bradley]

I have been running my G0453Z almost daily since August of 2010. I have never had to re-adjust anything following initial setup. I do re-wax the beds now and again. I did lighten the feed roller setting even more than I did during initial setup while working with some mahogany. The machine still had a grip like an alligator so I never put the additional tension back.

I'm not saying this is what happened to you but, there have been posts where machine's are not providing the desired result or the result is changing. In an effort to correct the problem, more things are changed than required. The person who tried to set his dovetail-way jointer to coplaner when his knives were just out of position comes to mind. My heart went out to that guy.

At any rate, once set, I cannot recall any of my machines "slipping" out of alignment. I can certainly recall not checking my jointer fence or tablesaw blade for square and ending up with some interesting joinery though .

[Mike Cutler]

I have the Jet ,Gold Series, 3HP Planer. I had to set some initial adjustments when I first got it 12 years ago, but other than that, it's just been keeping it clean. I do need to change knives though, and I know that will have me repeating the alignment section of the manual again.

[Danny Hamsley]

In five years, never had to touch my GO453Z. It has the carbide inserts. Does a fine job.

[Rob Holcomb]

Thanks everyone for your replies. This was th first time I had an issue and I bought the planer new back in 2008. Hopefully it will stay in alignment for many years.