Thicknesser Questions

[drillbit]

I changed the blades for the first time on my Metabo 260C thicknesser this week. Since then, I've started getting a couple of inches of snipe on the leading and trailing edges which I never had before.

Would this be caused by incorrect setting of the blade height? I carefully set the height using a straight piece of wood and measuring the travel when I rotated the blades by hand, but should I trying setting them lower? Or higher? Or have I set the blades at different heights? I don't know how accurate it needs to be....

I don't know if its relevant, but I checked the flatness of the bed today for the first time since I bought it, and I notice there is a slight curve to it. It's a cast iron bed, but if I lay a flat metal rule edge on it, there is light at the centre. Would that matter?

Thanks a lot..

 

[carlb40]

Have a watch of these

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHfjSatKITQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uXh1fx6JE0

 

[blackrodd]

Sounds like the blade's are set too high.
They should be set to the exact height as the out feed table, setting lower than this will mean hitting the outfeed table edge and also losing the cut partway through planing.
Setting cutters higher will result in the symptoms you described.
If you're outfeed table is non adjustable, then if you use the carry method you're cutters will be too high.
get a flat piece of hardwood about 12" long and set the blades to touching the wood.
It gets easier the more you do it! most machines will perform well when set up correctly.
Very few machine planers are perfect, don't get caught up in this applying engineering tolerences to woodworking!
I would suggest that the 1 or 2 thou centre difference is not even worth a consideration, although knowing you're machine is a good idea. HTH Regards Rodders

 

[drillbit]

Thanks very much for the replies. I got the technique for using the wood travel to determine the height of the blade from that Peter Parfitt video - (I really like his videos actually.) I think I just set mine too high. It was such a b**ger trying to get the blade and insert to stay together when I put them in, that I was just happy to get them vaguely near the mark... but it looks like I need to go back and do a better job.

Thanks a lot for the advice.

 

[marcros]

i have a standalone planer, which is a bit simpler to set up. The first time I changed the blades, using the drag method, i got great results. took an hour or so to do it, but first time and all that. The second time, i couldnt get them all even, it was an absolute nightmare. I bought the oneway multi gauge which wasnt cheap, but reset them all to 2 thou above the outfeed table, +/- a thou with ease, all in about 20 minutes.