Help neded with my jointer

[Cameronhill97]

Hi i have a small titan planer thicknesser a benchtop model if you will, ive been trying to machine up some oak today, planed the first face flat then put that against the fence to plane the side however for some reason it doesn't joint right to the end of the board and the board ends up narrower on one end and wider om the other?

what am i doing wrong?

thanks in advance

 

[RobinBHM]

Fade out is a common issue with surface planers.

It could be technique, it could be knives set too low, too high or beds not parallel.

If timber is miles longrr than the planer, that could be an issue.

Check you technique, make sure you are working on a concave edge and keep pressure on rear bed not front

You could start by altering the fence position, sometimes a different position over a fresh section of the knives helps.

Check knives are a few thou proud of rear bed.

Then check tables are parallel

 

[Fitzroy]

All the stuff robin said. Personally on my machine I see this most when the outfeed table is fractionally too high in relation to the knives, andIt's also more of an issue the thinner the cut you are trying to take. So for the final cut I find it easier to do with a hand plane if the gods refuse to let me get the machine to play ball on that last .1mm.

 

[morturn]

As above, your infeed and outfeed tables are not coplanar, so it is lifting the board off the cutter block as it passes across the tables.

People have their own opinions as to how to set up a planner, but this is what I do. Get yourself a decent straight edge and set the outfeed table to the same height as the cutters. You may need to adjust the cutter height to do this.

Raise up the infeed table to the same height as the outfeed table and check and adjust it so it is parallel with the outfeed table. Lower the infeed table to the depth of cut you require.

 

[RobinBHM]

Theoretically speaking the planers should be slightly higher than the rear bed.

The reason is that a planed surface is made of loads of small arcs. Top dead centre of the cutter block is therefore the mid point of each of these arcs but not the face of the timber.

Ive no idea if that really means the rear bed should be a gnats nudger higher or not. Ive always set blades so that a piece of wood will get pulled forward a few mm by the cutter when turned by hand.

 

[Fitzroy]

On my new (old) wadkin planer I have the luxury of an outfeed table that is also height adjustable so did some experiments. I find I need to have the knives a smidge higher than the table, I also use robin's method, else on thin cuts the cut tapers to nothing.

 

[transatlantic]

As above, your infeed and outfeed tables are not coplanar, so it is lifting the board off the cutter block as it passes across the tables.

I believe coplanar is the wrong term here. If the beds were coplanar, then the outfeed would be the same height as the infeed. I think you mean parallel.

In anycase, I thought of buying this planer and was put off by the fact that this can't be fixed, as there is no way to make an adjustment to correct the error with that model. At least from what I read in the reviews.

 

[Eric The Viking]

Theoretically speaking the planers should be slightly higher than the rear bed.

The reason is that a planed surface is made of loads of small arcs. Top dead centre of the cutter block is therefore the mid point of each of these arcs but not the face of the timber.

Ive no idea if that really means the rear bed should be a gnats nudger higher or not. Ive always set blades so that a piece of wood will get pulled forward a few mm by the cutter when turned by hand.

I used to do that, but although I still use 80g paper under the straightedge when setting, I'm now skeptical of that theory.

If you consider the geometry, that is true, but it's also entirely dependent on the speed with which the stock passes the knives. If it travels fast, you get arcs produced ("planer ripples"). If it goes slow, the cut surface approximates to a flat plane.

So what, then, should you set up for? Can you guarantee you'll be moving the stock at the same speed every time? The block is doing (say) 200 revs per sec, so that's 400 knife cuts per second. The block on my planer is about 60mm, knife-to-knife. Say I manage 20mm/s feed speed (to keep the sums easy): 2 arcs cut per mm, each of radius 30mm.

That's a tiny ripple, surely.

It's a different matter on the thicknesser, where the stock is driven in a fixed relationship between the rollers and the cutter block, and usually a lot faster than I feed by hand, topside. But the depth of cutter penetration is not controlled in the same way. I do get obvious ripples though (and don't on top). So for an easy life: plane a square corner, then thickness, then plane to final dimensions, to get rid of the thicknesser ripples.

As I said, I've taken to setting the knives with one or two pieces of 80g copier paper on the outfeed table under the straightedge/block I use. It's fast and seems to work really nicely.

Your mileage, etc.

E.