Dewalt 735 not parallel, need advice

[Sam Shankar]

Hi folks,

I'm looking for advice on whether to ignore/repair/euthanize a misaligned Dewalt 735.

A couple of years ago, I bought a used Dewalt 735 from a guy who had already installed a byrd cutterhead on it. I've recently realized that it is out of parallel by ~0.013". Picture attached showing 2x4s planed on either side of the cutter. Not sure when this started, but I would like to blame a lot of my wonky joinery over the last couple of years on this problem!

I have read a fair bit on the forums and it seems like there are two ways to solve this problem. One is to open the top and adjust the sprockets on one side by rotating them one tooth. I opened it up to try that, but saw that this is a fairly coarse fix: one 'tooth' worth of movement on the sprocket is about 0.020" if my math and measurements are right. (1 turn of the crank moves each sprocket 1/4 turn for 1/16" of vertical travel, and there's 13 teeth on a sprocket).

The other way, which seems potentially more precise, is to flip the planer over, use an impact driver to loosen the bolts holding the threaded columns in place on one side, then rotate the columns ever so slightly (about 20 degrees, by my math) to realign the chassis, then tighten them back down. (BTW, I checked, none of the columns seems to be loose, which is a problem people sometimes report.)

I'm plenty handy but this feels like it's pretty exacting stuff (20 degrees?), especially since with the byrd head there's no easy way to use a dial indicator to measure the height of the cutters from the table. And I don't own a dial indicator.

So I'd like some advice.

Option 1: Drive ~2 hours to the nearest Dewalt service center and hope they can fix it. Two half days of vacation required.
Option 2: get a dial indicator and try to adjust this thing myself, though I'm still not clear how.
Option 3: ignore it?
Option 4: suspect that the prior owner abused this thing (I've had to replace the thin piece of sheet metal on the base plus the thermal switch already), post it on craigslist with a disclaimer, and go get a new planer on the theory that life is short and if I don't finish this dining table my wife is gonna buy one. Thing is, I'd just buy a new DW735 and a new head!


planer not parallel.jpg

[John Lanciani]

Start simple; adjust it by one tooth and measure your results. Ideally, use as wide of a board as possible to test with as the 2x4 you used is less than a third of the width of the head. If you used a full width board your thickness discrepancy would be much greater, you may be 2-3 teeth off on the sprockets if your calculation is correct.

[Sam Shankar]

Ideally, use as wide of a board as possible to test with as the 2x4 you used is less than a third of the width of the head. If you used a full width board your thickness discrepancy would be much greater, you may be 2-3 teeth off on the sprockets if your calculation is correct.

No, the 2x4s I used went in far sides of the planer at the same time just as shown in the picture. So they represent, I think, exactly what I'd have gotten if I put a 12" board through in that pass; 1.215" on the far right side, and 1.228" on the far left. And fooling with 1 tooth at a time seems like a pretty coarse adjustment, isn't it?

[Paul F Franklin]

Instead of a dial indicator, which, as you say, would be difficult to use in this area, use a reference block and feeler gauges. The block can be almost anything solid and a couple of inches thick, like a piece of close grained hardwood, or even better a 1-2-3 block (which is handy for various setup tasks). Slide this in the narrow side and lower the planer very slowly while manually turning the cutterhead until you feel the insets just kiss the setup block. Now move the block to the wide side and use feeler gauges in conjunction with the block to measure the difference. Make your adjustment and recheck. Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied.

[Sam Shankar]

Rinse and repeat until you are satisfied.

Just so I know - your method is to somehow loosen the allen screws holding the posts to the base, then rotate them a teeny bit using the flat sections near the base then tighten them back down?

[glenn bradley]

You may be within spec for any lunchbox planer. I'm not saying that it isn't problematic. I would perform your test at varying heights to see just how consistent the results are. If they vary several thou between 1/2" material and 4" material I would probably just carry on and be aware that I need to double check / correct results when they would directly effect sensitive joinery; dovetails, box joints, and other locking joints. Once you start jumping teeth you are committed. There is more than one hobbyist who wonders why he ever started trying to adjust his dovetail-way jointer tables for co-planer . . . were they really that bad??? .

If you are just going to buy another lunchbox and spend most of the cost of the unit to upgrade it I would seriously consider a floor model. The footprint is the same and the adjustability is actually built in. I will go on record to say that this degree of error would be unacceptable in many situations. Anyone who has seen a dovetail joint or a frame miter that is out 1/128" can understand that.

[Mel Fulks]

Good luck to you. But if you can't fix it ...sell it as, "a planer without parallel " cuz' honesty is the best policy !

[Ronald Blue]

I can't tell clearly from the parts break down but here is a suggestion/question. Along with the possible "jumping" one tooth of the adjusting chain on the sprockets. The "nut" for lack of a better term that engages with the height adjusting screw appears to be held in place with screws/bolts. Can this also be "indexed" to change the height on one side? Just thinking out loud. Good luck.

[Paul F Franklin]

Just so I know - your method is to somehow loosen the allen screws holding the posts to the base, then rotate them a teeny bit using the flat sections near the base then tighten them back down?

Yes, since you just need a small tweak. Use a piece of tape on the columns as a flag so you can tell how much you've actually moved it.

[Ron Selzer]

IF I am figuring this right than it is less than 1/64 out from outside to outside.
Is this repeatable as in you can change settings up or down and get this same difference?
are you cranking the planner down then raising to the setting to take all slop out?
Time you sand the finished product how would you even notice this?
A bench top planner that works to less than 1/64 is damn accurate, not certain at what dollar point you would get a floor planner to be this consistent.
Ron

[Derek Arita]

I think the adjustment will be easier than you think. I had an old Delta planer that operated in a similar way. I was intimidated at first, but when I got down to doing the work, it turned out to be pretty simple and resulted in an accurate planer that I was happy with for years.

[michael langman]

The dewalt 734 has a lock down for the head that the 735 does not have. What keeps the head locked down on the 735 may not be working right.

[Sam Shankar]

Derek Arita, above, you get my thanks today. I screwed up my courage, loosened the columns, and did the deed. It's now within ~.002 across the width of the planer. I'm writing out my steps here for the next person who struggles with this.

If your Dewalt D735 planer is out of parallel, you can bring it back into alignment by rotating both of the threaded columns on one side of the planer so as to slightly raise/lower that side to bring it back into parallel. Here's how I did it.

1. Joint two ~4" wide pieces of wood so they are nice and flat on one side.

2. Run the two pieces of wood through the planer at the same time (flat side down, obviously), one on one side and one on the other.

3. As they come out, mark the pieces to indicate which side you put them on and which edge of each piece was the outside edge.

4. Put the pieces on a flat reference surface (table saw, jointer, whatever) and swap the sides of the pieces so the outside edge of the right piece is touching the outside edge of the left piece. If one is a little thicker than the other, congrats, your planer is not parallel. In my case it was pretty obvious. Figure out whether the right side is too high or too low and by how much. I used calipers and found the right side was high by about 0.018."

5. Unplug the planer, tip it on its left side (so the crank is in the air, that's why we're working on the right side), and look underneath. Each threaded column is held in place to the base with an allen bolt that goes up through the base into the bottom of the column. The columns also have a squared off section right near the base that allows you to turn them with a large open-ended wrench.

6. Loosen the two allen bolts on the columns right side of the planer, which is the side that should be up in the air if you tipped the planer on its left side. Other people on the net have reported that these bolts can be really really tight. Some people have had to use an impact wrench to loosen them. In my case, a socket wrench was enough. Maybe the prior owner had done this before?

7. Now you are going to use a large wrench to rotate *both* of the right side columns slightly to either raise or lower the chassis as necessary. By slightly, I mean very little. From what I can tell, a full turn of a column moves the chassis up or down by roughly 1/4." That means a 10 degree rotation of a column will raise or lower the chassis by around 0.006. Pretty sensitive! I moved mine by about 30 degrees. If I had been smart, I would have scribed the starting points on the base and columns for later reference.

8. Tighten the allen bolts again to lock the columns in place. Hold the columns in place with a wrench if necessary so they don't rotate as you tighten the bolts.

9. Run your two-strips-of-wood test again and repeat as necessary. If you put things back together and find that it takes a lot of effort to turn the crank that raises and lowers the chassis, you may have skewed the chassis by rotating one column more than the other. Or by rotating them in opposite ways. Oops. It's fixable. Trust me!

It took me 3-4 tries to dial it in right, but it is way way way better than before. Thank you Sawmill Creek.

[Gordon Dale]

Thanks Sam, for taking the time to write up these instructions and post them. I have saved them for future reference.

[Bernie Kopfer]

You have done the community a service by detailing your repair process. Thank you and those of us who own 735’s pray we won’t need to use the info.