Thicknesses leaving indent.
- Thread starter mbrogden
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I think that is snipe, I have the same issue occasionally and sometimes overcome it by putting it through the other way round, changes direction of the grain but I am no P/T expert.
Sachakins
The most wasted of days is one without woodwork
Yep, it's snipe. You can get around it buy attaching a sacrificial board to your piece, which allows for the snipe to happen before your board starts to be planed/thicknesser.
Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
It can also happen at the outgoing end too. Holding the end of the board up a touch as the board starts can help and doing the same as it exits helps to keep the board tight to the table. Roller adjustments may be needed and blade setting can improve things too. Check the manual. One of the reasons many people leave a board 4" to 6" longer than needed so there is material to trim off to get rid of the snipe. If it is a lunch box planer you may never be able to adjust it out and will have to leave the wood long.
Pete
Pete
pgrbff
Established Member
There are plenty of youtube videos and articles online about how to tune your thicknesser to eliminate or atleast reduce the amount of snipe.
Droogs
Not the Sharpest Moderator in the box
The longer you can leave your board longer 
the better. The old maxim carried over from handtool days is make it thin and leave it tall. So basically work on the witdh and thickness first and then cut to length. This is one of the reasons all the benches in wood-cuttings etc are so long. While a little harder to get straight and true when long it allows for much more accurate boards to be created.
Now for those who work in a little garage etc these days space is at a premium and so most tend to ignore this and up cutting boards to a manageable size. Then endlessly repeat the planer thicknessing steps for lots of little boards rather than just once or twice for long boards. If you are unable to keep it long and must cut to a short length then try to do the following if you are unable to minimize the amount of snipe you get from your machine.
Use your gash off cuts to good effect by using a piece stuck on either end of the expensive board that will ensure the snipe appears off the board you want to keep. Attech using biscuits or dowel or domino etc and a little pva. Then trim to size with a minimum of wastage of the expensive wood.
hth
the better. The old maxim carried over from handtool days is make it thin and leave it tall. So basically work on the witdh and thickness first and then cut to length. This is one of the reasons all the benches in wood-cuttings etc are so long. While a little harder to get straight and true when long it allows for much more accurate boards to be created.Now for those who work in a little garage etc these days space is at a premium and so most tend to ignore this and up cutting boards to a manageable size. Then endlessly repeat the planer thicknessing steps for lots of little boards rather than just once or twice for long boards. If you are unable to keep it long and must cut to a short length then try to do the following if you are unable to minimize the amount of snipe you get from your machine.
Use your gash off cuts to good effect by using a piece stuck on either end of the expensive board that will ensure the snipe appears off the board you want to keep. Attech using biscuits or dowel or domino etc and a little pva. Then trim to size with a minimum of wastage of the expensive wood.
hth
Your blades are set too high. Reset them by putting a lath on the outfeed table and rotate the block rearwards until the blades just 'kiss' it. The usual advice to rotate the block until the lath moves back 6mm or so never works for me. This assumes you have a planer/thicknesser. Looking at the photo again you might have a dedicated thicknesser so adjusting the blades will be a different procedure.
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Bob Chapman
Established Member
Does the OP mean the snipe? There is what looks like a groove much nearer the end. Could that be what is meant?
Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
Yes. Snipe is the "bite" for the first/last couple inches of a board as it is run through the thicknesser/planer. It is actually a small step rather than a groove making the last bit thinner.
Pete
MARK.B.
Established Member
When doing multiple pieces in the mill /timber yard,they would run them end to end without stopping and this limited any potential snipe to the first and last pieces through, the test pieces and sometimes there were many and any defective pieces went into a 40 yarder parked outside the mill.This was changed twice a week, sometimes more. I know the wastage was bordering on the insanetime =money and the management would rather bin it without any check to see if it was still of any use or salable .Since i left new management has cut this down a lot i hear and i expect with prices as they are the wastage will go down even more. As said leave it as long as you can for as long as you can,support where needed on both the in feed and out feed, I know at home in a lot of cases it is not possible to get a helping hand on the out feed end but for multiple smaller lengths it makes all the difference as you can use the above method
time =money and the management would rather bin it without any check to see if it was still of any use or salable .Since i left new management has cut this down a lot i hear and i expect with prices as they are the wastage will go down even more. As said leave it as long as you can for as long as you can,support where needed on both the in feed and out feed, I know at home in a lot of cases it is not possible to get a helping hand on the out feed end but for multiple smaller lengths it makes all the difference as you can use the above method Ollie78
Established Member
It can be the fact the blades are set out too far as mentioned above.
However I suspect the tension on the rollers is too high or uneven.
I had to adjust a lot of tension out of the rollers on my machine when it was delivered. The rollers need to be even with each other, even left to right and just tight enough to pull the wood through.
There will be some bolts which adjust the spring tension somewhere.
The techniques like passing wood through together etc. are useful but if the machine is set up right should not really be required.
Ollie
However I suspect the tension on the rollers is too high or uneven.
I had to adjust a lot of tension out of the rollers on my machine when it was delivered. The rollers need to be even with each other, even left to right and just tight enough to pull the wood through.
There will be some bolts which adjust the spring tension somewhere.
The techniques like passing wood through together etc. are useful but if the machine is set up right should not really be required.
Ollie
Jacob
Pint of bass, porkpie, and packet of crisps please
Couldn't be wronger.The longer you can leave your board longer
The maxim is "leave as long as possible for as long as possible", but this gets completely misunderstood. It refers to your stock and means when starting a job use shortest/smallest pieces first. Better still work through your cutting list (taken from your design drawing) from largest pieces first, always taking them from the smallest pieces available.
It's just basic stock keeping, reduces waste and makes sure you won't leave yourself without long enough lengths by having cut the short stuff first.
Don't plane anything until it has been cut down to length, width, thickness, according to your cutting list. Except very small pieces are easier to handle left as one, to be cut after planing.
Some long stuff is bent so much that it would be impossible to flatten without losing too much thickness, so this gets set aside for shorter pieces, cut to length first.
Timber yards run long lengths of PAR for convenience of buyers but small workshops don't have to do it for themselves.
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