Hammer A3-31 - Help me eliminate snipe

[Lance Conry]

Out of interest, do you lock the height adjustment with the little lever every time? I have a new unit, and find that unless I lock the lever hard and take off less that 0.5mm, I get snipe on the leading edge. I will contact my dealer, just want to know whether it is unreasonable to expect to not have to lock the height every time.

[Edwin Santos]

Out of interest, do you lock the height adjustment with the little lever every time? I have a new unit, and find that unless I lock the lever hard and take off less that 0.5mm, I get snipe on the leading edge. I will contact my dealer, just want to know whether it is unreasonable to expect to not have to lock the height every time.

Lance,
Yes, I lock the height lever firmly every time as a matter of habit. The adjustments discussed in this thread have eliminated all snipe for me. I think the height lock lever is there for a reason and besides the instructions, it stands to reason it should be tightened each time.

From what you describe, I think your machine could use a spring and/or roller height adjustment because you should not get any snipe, and certainly you should not be restricted to 0.5mm passes. I'm in the habit of light cuts with the machine but even then I'm in the range of 1-1.5mm.

Edwin

[Edwin Santos]

Sounds good Edwin.

Out of of curiosity did you take any pics or description of your dial gauge setup used for checking roller to cutter relativity? I would be interesting in checking mine for my own curiosity. Thanks.

Greg,
I used a gizmo called a TS Aligner that used to be manufactured and sold by a guy named Ed Bennett. I must have bought it 20 years ago and I don't believe it is available anymore. It will approximate the function of the Oneway Gauge that Felder recommends in the sense that it will mount the dial indicator horizontally or vertically, so in this case I configured the dial indicator vertically and upside down so the measuring point was registering against the cutter (or roller) and the base was on the planer table.

[Rod Sheridan]

Out of interest, do you lock the height adjustment with the little lever every time? I have a new unit, and find that unless I lock the lever hard and take off less that 0.5mm, I get snipe on the leading edge. I will contact my dealer, just want to know whether it is unreasonable to expect to not have to lock the height every time.

I almost never use the lock, and I have zero snipe. Normal passes for me are 2mm deep...........Rod.

[Greg Parrish]

Duh, didn’t even think about using my oneway gauge. Thanks.

Greg,
I used a gizmo called a TS Aligner that used to be manufactured and sold by a guy named Ed Bennett. I must have bought it 20 years ago and I don't believe it is available anymore. It will approximate the function of the Oneway Gauge that Felder recommends in the sense that it will mount the dial indicator horizontally or vertically, so in this case I configured the dial indicator vertically and upside down so the measuring point was registering against the cutter (or roller) and the base was on the planer table.

[Prashun Patel]

Great thread. Thanks Edwin. I always just accepted the 'nature of the beast' argument. Now I will make these adjustments.

I am glad the adjustments can Sever Us (from this) Snipe.

Of course, I expect with my luck to make the problem worse.

[Rod Sheridan]

Great thread. Thanks Edwin. I always just accepted the 'nature of the beast' argument. Now I will make these adjustments.

I am glad the adjustments can Sever Us (from this) Snipe.

Of course, I expect with my luck to make the problem worse.

Ok, you win the pun of the week award..........Rod.

[Lance Conry]

Thanks Edwin and Rod for relaying your experiences with respect to using the lock.
I've got some time tomorrow (or perhaps even today), so will make some adjustments to the roller spring tension. At the risk of sounding daft, am I correct in assuming that snipe indicates insufficient tension?

[Rod Sheridan]

Either too much or too little.

Does the board travel in a straight line through the planer or skew to one side?

Regards, Rod.

[Lance Conry]

I'm fairly confident it goes through straight. When the piece of timber first starts feeding in, it kicks up the tail of the board as it's fed into the planer, which I assume is normal, and yes, I make every effort to feed in and tail out level with the bed.

[Joe Adams]

I'm fairly confident it goes through straight. When the piece of timber first starts feeding in, it kicks up the tail of the board as it's fed into the planer, which I assume is normal, and yes, I make every effort to feed in and tail out level with the bed.

Interestingly enough, my MiniMax FS30c does exactly the same thing. Kicks up the tail of the board as it's first fed in. I also tend to get snipe on the infeed end of a board.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi, yes that kick up is normal.

You shouldn't have to hold the board once it's in the planer.

One other item to check is put a block of wood on the bed, use a 1 X 2 as a lever, gently pry up on both ends of the in and outfeed rollers, observing that the blocks that hold them in the sides of the machine move a couple of mm. Perhaps a bit of spray lube on them would also be a good idea.

regards, Rod.

[Lance Conry]

Well it was over two months ago when I said I'd have a crack at adjusting my machine the next day. Unfortunately the busyness of life got in the way, and really wanted a solid several hours to make the adjustments rather than getting halfway through and needing to stop. I finally got into the workshop last week, offered a prayer to the heavens, and started adjusting.

Well the great news is that I now have zero snipe. I don't need to tighten the height locking handle, nor do I need to tail out (on the pieces of timber I've tested with). All four spring tension nuts were tightened nearly all the way up, so needed a fair bit of loosening. The other result, is that the tail of my stock no longer kicks up quite as violently as it used to, which is good for me, but perhaps not so much for my dentist. I've been pondering it for a while, but haven't come up with a definitive explanation as to why a tight spring tension would result in snipe. The best I could come up with was that the timber being overly compressed, caused a belly on each side, like pushing down on the middle of a li-lo (doubtful, but that's all I've got). The other observation, though I'm not one certain it's accurate, was that when trying to adjust out the snipe on the trailing edge of the board, the in-feed roller was the one that made a difference. I know it seemed counter intuitive at the time. None the less, this was all very interesting to me at the time, but the longer I have a machine that works perfectly, the less inclined I am to get to the bottom of the why. There are so many other exciting things to ponder, like hand planing wild grained timbers!

I took the opportunity to put together a blog article (and begin a blog for my woodworking endeavours), so hopefully will be a benefit to others with similar issues (http://lancesworkbench.conryclan.com...-thicknessing/). Thanks a lot to those that provided advice.

Regards, Lance

[Sebastien La Madeleine]

Excellent article Lance!

[George Yetka]

My 31 seams to have been fine from factory. No snipe unless its long board and i let it go out unsupported. I take about 2mm per pass no locking of the lever either