My dad was originally trained as a shipwright, although that's not where his life journey took him. He was always more of a rough carpenter anyways and the job he was doing job brought him into the mid 200 thousands a year back in the 80's. He did alright for himself despite humble beginnings (I'm one generation removed from working poor).
In his retirement, he fancied getting back into woodwork and had a small shed/shop in the back yard. He filled it with benchtop tools mostly. Dad never saw much value in spending a lot of money on tools, so he went dept store type stuff with most of it. Basically it was a "good enough" attitude.
When he passed, Mom told me to take whatever I wanted because she was just going to get rid of it. My brother has no interest in anything DIY, so I had the run of the place.
One of the things he had was a 12 inch "lunchbox" planer. Mastercraft brand, which is a Canadian tire store tool name.
It's a rebranded Delta and was dated 1990:
so it's more "old school" type construction. All metal (no plastic gears, etc) and of reasonable quality, albeit of lighter construction than a big shop style plainer.
I only used it occasionally, mostly to plane glued up pieces level to make use of shorter scraps for bigger projects.
It had a bad case of "snipe", which is where the knives dig in at the start and/or the end of the board. An example of "snipe":
I tried before (halfheartedly) to adjust it out, but never could. I just accepted it as a function of it being a lower value machine and either used longer board lengths where I could cut off the snipped ends or would feed a sacrificial piece in after it so the blades wouldn't snipe the good piece.
Today, I figured I'd fill the day with cleaning, lubricating and adjusting the old planer to keep it going for a few more decades of my limited uses. It's all chain drive, steel cogs and steel bevel gears. Obviously made before the time plastic gears became prevalent because there's none in this machine. Kinda nice. What would have been seen as a cheap machine then is a quality machine today. Go figure.
Stripped it down, cleaned out the bits of sawdust that was caked in places, cleaned out the old grease and polished the bits of surface rust.
Looked for a way to make sure the head adjusted up and down evenly so there wouldn't be a taper across the knives. There was no obvious or easy reference points, So I broke out my dial bore gauge and used the knife drum to the table as a reference. A bit of measuring and it showed the drum was not level to the bed, so it was cutting a taper of about 0.050 thou. Not unusual for a retail level machine. they are sold at a "price point" after all so QA is going to take a hit somewhere.
I had to disconnect the bevel gear under the table and shift one of the screw jacks about 3 teeth. This brought the drum within 0.002 across it's length, which is more than accurate enough for woodworking. Another bonus is the height adjustment lever turns much more easily now. Makes sense as the head was off level a bit and would have been binding a bit on the screw jacks.
I hand lapped the bed surface with a machined steel block and 1000 grit wet/dry to make sure it was smooth and even. Still has a couple scratches/grooves in it from Dad forcing something he shouldn't have through there at some point, but now there's no catches or drags.
Then I leveled the in-feed and out-feed tables to the planer bed. Un-level tables is the most common cause of snipe on a planer. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a source for me so I fettled with it all until I couldn't even get a 2 thou feeler gauge under my machinist straight edge anywhere. This only has stamped steel tables, so it took the better part of the afternoon to get it all true and locked down.
Finished lubricating and reassembling and stood back to examine my handy work:
Doesn't look a lot different but it functions much nicer. as for the sniping, the proof is in the pudding. So I grabbed a scrap piece of 2x4 and feed it into the planer:
Wonderful! Snipe free!
There is still a little bit of snipe, but it's pretty much just a light line that you can see if you roll the piece back in forth in the light. Can't even feel it with your fingertips. Planers will always have a bit of snipe somewhere because of the way they work, but this is what you want: minimized to the point where you wouldn't know it was there unless you were looking for it.
Like all things, possessing the actual "thing" will only get you so far. It's the meticulous setup/adjustments that gets you from "mostly kinda works" to near perfection. Assuming you actually know how to properly use the "thing" in the first place.
Now to sew up a nice little dust cover for it and slide it onto it's shelf until I need it again.
It still has knives with a few dings in them, so it leaves a couple little raised beads her and there in the wood. Dad probably fed some wood though it with a nail in it at some point and chipped the blades. they are double sided, but the other side is also damaged the same way.
Luckily, you can still get blades for it at about 20 bucks a set, so I just ordered up a new set and will swap them in when they get here. I'll see if i can regrind the old ones on the mill and rehab them as spares. About 5-10 thou looks to be enough to remove the chipping, so it should be "do-able". If I can't regrind them, I may be able to "shift" edge of the two blades left and right to see if i can cancel out the few little "chip ridges" it leaves behind on the boards.
Next weeks I'll pull out Dad's old Craftsman" jointer and give that a good rehab too.
In his retirement, he fancied getting back into woodwork and had a small shed/shop in the back yard. He filled it with benchtop tools mostly. Dad never saw much value in spending a lot of money on tools, so he went dept store type stuff with most of it. Basically it was a "good enough" attitude.
When he passed, Mom told me to take whatever I wanted because she was just going to get rid of it. My brother has no interest in anything DIY, so I had the run of the place.
One of the things he had was a 12 inch "lunchbox" planer. Mastercraft brand, which is a Canadian tire store tool name.
It's a rebranded Delta and was dated 1990:
so it's more "old school" type construction. All metal (no plastic gears, etc) and of reasonable quality, albeit of lighter construction than a big shop style plainer.
I only used it occasionally, mostly to plane glued up pieces level to make use of shorter scraps for bigger projects.
It had a bad case of "snipe", which is where the knives dig in at the start and/or the end of the board. An example of "snipe":
I tried before (halfheartedly) to adjust it out, but never could. I just accepted it as a function of it being a lower value machine and either used longer board lengths where I could cut off the snipped ends or would feed a sacrificial piece in after it so the blades wouldn't snipe the good piece.
Today, I figured I'd fill the day with cleaning, lubricating and adjusting the old planer to keep it going for a few more decades of my limited uses. It's all chain drive, steel cogs and steel bevel gears. Obviously made before the time plastic gears became prevalent because there's none in this machine. Kinda nice. What would have been seen as a cheap machine then is a quality machine today. Go figure.
Stripped it down, cleaned out the bits of sawdust that was caked in places, cleaned out the old grease and polished the bits of surface rust.
Looked for a way to make sure the head adjusted up and down evenly so there wouldn't be a taper across the knives. There was no obvious or easy reference points, So I broke out my dial bore gauge and used the knife drum to the table as a reference. A bit of measuring and it showed the drum was not level to the bed, so it was cutting a taper of about 0.050 thou. Not unusual for a retail level machine. they are sold at a "price point" after all so QA is going to take a hit somewhere.
I had to disconnect the bevel gear under the table and shift one of the screw jacks about 3 teeth. This brought the drum within 0.002 across it's length, which is more than accurate enough for woodworking. Another bonus is the height adjustment lever turns much more easily now. Makes sense as the head was off level a bit and would have been binding a bit on the screw jacks.
I hand lapped the bed surface with a machined steel block and 1000 grit wet/dry to make sure it was smooth and even. Still has a couple scratches/grooves in it from Dad forcing something he shouldn't have through there at some point, but now there's no catches or drags.
Then I leveled the in-feed and out-feed tables to the planer bed. Un-level tables is the most common cause of snipe on a planer. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a source for me so I fettled with it all until I couldn't even get a 2 thou feeler gauge under my machinist straight edge anywhere. This only has stamped steel tables, so it took the better part of the afternoon to get it all true and locked down.
Finished lubricating and reassembling and stood back to examine my handy work:
Doesn't look a lot different but it functions much nicer. as for the sniping, the proof is in the pudding. So I grabbed a scrap piece of 2x4 and feed it into the planer:
Wonderful! Snipe free!
There is still a little bit of snipe, but it's pretty much just a light line that you can see if you roll the piece back in forth in the light. Can't even feel it with your fingertips. Planers will always have a bit of snipe somewhere because of the way they work, but this is what you want: minimized to the point where you wouldn't know it was there unless you were looking for it.
Like all things, possessing the actual "thing" will only get you so far. It's the meticulous setup/adjustments that gets you from "mostly kinda works" to near perfection. Assuming you actually know how to properly use the "thing" in the first place.
Now to sew up a nice little dust cover for it and slide it onto it's shelf until I need it again.
It still has knives with a few dings in them, so it leaves a couple little raised beads her and there in the wood. Dad probably fed some wood though it with a nail in it at some point and chipped the blades. they are double sided, but the other side is also damaged the same way.
Luckily, you can still get blades for it at about 20 bucks a set, so I just ordered up a new set and will swap them in when they get here. I'll see if i can regrind the old ones on the mill and rehab them as spares. About 5-10 thou looks to be enough to remove the chipping, so it should be "do-able". If I can't regrind them, I may be able to "shift" edge of the two blades left and right to see if i can cancel out the few little "chip ridges" it leaves behind on the boards.
Next weeks I'll pull out Dad's old Craftsman" jointer and give that a good rehab too.
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