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Avoiding Tearout
Tearout happens when you feed a board into the planer with the wrong end forward. The knives catch in the rising wood fibers and tear rather than cut them.
Tearout happens when you feed a board into the planer with the wrong end forward. The knives catch in the rising wood fibers and tear rather than cut them.
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This illustrates the wrong technique.
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In some cases, you'll be able to tell which end to feed into the planer by inspecting the grain (or to be precise, the direction of the fibers). When you're planing the wide surface of the board, inspect the grain on the narrow edge. When you're planing the edges, inspect the wide face. On rough lumber, you can feel the fibers by running your hand over the board. It will be smooth in one direction and rough in the other. Feed the smooth direction forward. With some boards, you might get tearout in both directions. Then the best approach is to take a very small amount of wood off with each pass; 1/32 in. is about right.
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Plane Perfect Deck Spindles
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Remove saw marks from ripped 2x2s with a planer. Gang feeding like this speeds the work and reduces "snipe" on the ends of boards.
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Alternate between planing and lowering the cutters in 1/32-in. increments until saw marks are gone. Stack the 2x2s with the planed face up to keep track of what you've done.
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Reclaim Old Wood
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Dig out all remnants of nails, screws and staples before planing old lumber. One encounter with a nail is all it takes to put a good-sized nick in a set of knives.
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Clean salvaged lumber with multiple shallow passes. Remove between 1/32 and 1/16 in. with each pass until you get down to fresh wood or reach your desired thickness.
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Tricks for Stopping "Snipe"
Snipe is a term used to describe the planer gouge that often occurs at the beginning and end of boards as they enter and leave the planer. Most new planers have a mechanism for locking the planer heads in place after you adjust the depth. This helps minimize snipe. But the best technique is simply to leave an extra 5 in. of length on your boards. Then cut off the snipe when you cut the boards to their final length. Another trick is to feed in a sacrificial board first. Then feed the next board in against the end of the first board and continue feeding boards end to end. Finally feed in another sacrificial board. The planer will treat it as one long board, and only snipe the first and last boards.
Snipe is a term used to describe the planer gouge that often occurs at the beginning and end of boards as they enter and leave the planer. Most new planers have a mechanism for locking the planer heads in place after you adjust the depth. This helps minimize snipe. But the best technique is simply to leave an extra 5 in. of length on your boards. Then cut off the snipe when you cut the boards to their final length. Another trick is to feed in a sacrificial board first. Then feed the next board in against the end of the first board and continue feeding boards end to end. Finally feed in another sacrificial board. The planer will treat it as one long board, and only snipe the first and last boards.
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Stack boards side by side to plane off saw marks. Look at the grain pattern on the face of the boards and orient each board to avoid tearout.
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Sand out ridges left by a nicked planer knife with 120-grit sandpaper. Sand with the grain. Wrap the sandpaper around a Styrofoam block or use a commercial sanding block as shown here.
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