Seen a lot of videos trying to explain/fix snipe, but none of them come close to your explanation. Your diagram was awesome, it wasn't a thing of beauty, but it got the job done. Excellent preference for function over form.
Thanks for this video, very well explained. I`ve had this problem with my Dewalt planer for years and could never figure out what was happening. Was thinking about the spacer you use. the way you made it it`s only useful for one thickness. An improvement on that idea would be to use shims on either end of the spacer. a series of 1/8 spacers for instance. allowing you to adjust fairly quickly.
This is something that has bugged me for years with my planer. I didn't know how to fix it. I always just cut the ends off to get rid o it.Thanks for this video. I think I'm going to try to make some of those sticks to lock it down.
Well, the one I bought is better than my old Delta. Haven't used it that much yet though. Dust hood that comes with it needs to be hooked up to a vacuum, so made a straight-out chute for it.
Thanks for the insight. My planer used to be really good considering the price I paid for it, but as I use it more the snipe keeps getting worse. Keep up the good work!
Ha! Just commented on your other video about sticking with my old Delta planer, and here it is! Those infeed/outfeed tables for the Delta are glorified document inboxes. That's what I use them for in my shop. I use an 8' long melamine-covered board with a cleat on it as the "base" of my planer. I put that through the machine and then just run my boards through on top of that. It helps with snipe a bit, but that Delta has always been the king of snipe. I will have to try out the spacer blocks. I hadn't thought of that.
We'd gotten a newer, larger thickness planner when I was in Jr High. It was a monster and honestly I've not see one that big since. 36" wide and you could feed it lumber as thick as I believe about 18" though I don't know how you get a timber that massive in our shop. As it was we didn't get a larger planner because the size up from that older one we got wouldn't fit. But as nice and big as this vintage piece of machinery was. And when I say vintage it was vintage in 1971 when I was in Jr High. The shop teacher went on to teach us all about it, how to use it and what to expect. Like snipe. So buy lumber larger than you want so it will be the right size after you mill it down to the perfect size.
Great video Matthias: I have a Dewalt 733 which is 13 years old and it has locks , but you still get a small amount of snipe. I find that if I lift the board up as it is being fed in , the snipe is minimized. After 13 years the infeed roller was very badly worn, so I just took it all apart and replaced both rollers and the bearings. It tool about 2 hours and cost me $90 for the parts. After I got it apart I noticed the drive belt is worn and will probably go in a few years (about $35) next time
When the boards you start with are just barely longer than what you make, that doesn't work. Much of my wood is cut from firewood pieces, so I often need the full length.
I have a harbour freight planer and it has some snipe as it has no in or out feed tables. The snipe seems to be the same depth as well as length on the work piece. If I need the work piece to be snipe free I just cut my piece longer than needed to eliminate it. It is a waste of material but it works for me. Most of the projects I make is with reclaimed wood and pallets that are rustic anyway. A belt sander cleans up and feathers the snipe away.
Even my DeWalt, with four screws, leaves some snipe. The only method for eliminating it, that I have found easily repeatable, are... 1.) Buy a 2x4 and just cut it into pieces and use them as sacrificial pieces at the start/end of a work piece, and 2.) On long boards just literally lift it pretty hard as it enters/exits, to help the roller keep it down. The tables help a bit, but my DeWalt tables aren't perfectly flat, so even they don't support all that well. They make it better, but they aren't the singular solution. a single 2x4 can give you a ton of sacrificial pieces... but you will need to clean your planer knives more due to sap. The common boards (pine etc), work well, but cost a little more than the 2x4s, but also have less sap.
Mostly I don't bother with spacers. But if you do make spacers, you only need them for the final thickness, because the snipe from previous passes just gets planed off.
When it gets more stucking than feeding, I take a rag soaked in alcohol or something like that and I clean the rollers with it. Looks like rollers get slippery after planing boards high in resin (I hope I used words correctly, I'm not too good in english)
Just have to say, you have a lot of great ideas, but in this case, you'd have to make spacers for each thickness that you would ever want to plane. IMO this isn't a solution. Just a stop gap. After learning more about planers, and seeing some of the solutions, and the amount of material I've had to throw out because of snipe, I would never buy a planer without a snipe or head lock mechanism. If I have to pay $200 more for a planer with a head lock, I'd make that up in the first 6 months in lost material. I have an 8 year old delta that the whole head mechanism lifts up and down and it has done this since new. Simply because Delta didn't care about how they made it. A simple stop collar on the lifting shafts would prevent this. Unfortunately there isn't space to add one aftermarket.
Very cool model to show what is happening. I have a similar cheap delta. What I have done to get rid of the snipe, is to just do my final thickness pass on the planer. Spacers is a cool idea though!
Hi Mathias, I would like to make a planer sled to use with my 24'' wide Grizzly planer to be able to joint one side of 8' warped boards. I have seen some videos of people making torsion boxes for their planer sleds, while some others use just a flat piece of plywood. I’m contemplating the need for a tension box vs. a single flat sheet for the sled, the single sheet hopefully being lighter and easier to handle yet possibly somewhat flexible. I obviously don't want it to flex and affect the flattness of the plane on the board planed using the sled, nor do I want snipe in there. I guess it makes sense that if the planer table is flat and the infeed and outfeed board supports are in plane with the table, and close enough together to avoid any sagging, then a flat single sheet should suffice as the sled. I guess the torsion box is to avoid flexing of the sled from infeed board support to planer table, and from planer table to outfeed board support. I also suppose that if the workpiece is strong enough not to flex then the support sled wouldn’t need to be too rigid once its shimmed flat if workpiece and sled are secured to each other somehow in the flat position. But I suppose if the work piece can flex, then the sled needs to be strong enough not to flex if the distance between work support and planer table would allow flexing to occur. Where as if I could avoid any flexing between board supports and planer table, then simply using an initial flat work table to securely shim and fasten warped boards to flat plywood/sled would suffice to produce acceptable flat planed boards. Anyhow, to clarify and to make a long comment even longer, I want an 8’, light weight planer sled. Do you have any suggestions or thoughts towards designs and materials for this? Maybe just different sleds for different needs is the answer. What sizes and designs do you think would be most useful? Thank you! I know you know Thank you, Michael Flax.
Sounds like you could also: A. plane your stock as a single piece, B. use a 'sacrificial' board first and last, and run multiple pieces through end to end, C. if the columns are exposed, make some hold down clamps to keep the head from moving upwards as pieces enter and leave. All of the above would be a pain in the rear though. Thanks for the video. I always wondered what problems cheap planers have versus the expensive ones.
Hello and thank you for the informative and helpful video, i have a question and would appreciate if you have an answer, the rollers has 2 types of springs, one is less hard than the 3 others, any idea to which end of which roller it belongs???? Thanks a million
To eliminate snipe on a portable planer, could you raise the head all the way up, clamp or fix the head at the posts and threaded drive rods, then build a raising and lowering bed? Thoughts? Keeping he bed parallel and rigid may be the challenge.
I hate my delta plane. My snipe is far worse than yours. I gave up trying to eliminate it and just run longer boards through and cut the ends off. I'm going to try your trick today!!!! thanks.
I wish I could remember what brand of planer my high school shop class had. The thing had a belt drive and platen it slid on under the blades. Maybe it was modified by one of the teachers. I don't remember any snipe from it, but at that age, is snipe even on your radar? lol
I have a makita 2012NB planer, it's a well constructed machine but it leaves a very noticeable snipe. i was thinking a lot about this problem, i will test what happens if i set the cutting height and adding 4 wedges (2 in the rear, 2 in the front) after in order to block the head (that would easily admit height corrections) i think this should work like the blocking devices you show but adjustable. i would like to know your opinion.
The problem I'm having is when gluing stock together to make legs for my project. If there is a slight deviation on the gluing side then it leaves a noticeable gap. I'm having to either leave the boards a little long and cut off the ends or feed through a sacrificial piece before and after the cut. Wish there were a better solution 😕
Another solution is to glue a rail to each side 5 " longer than the short board you want to plane. So, it will look like the letter H. Then plane as normal and the snipe will be on the rails instead of the board. The rails can be 1/16" thicker than the board and 1" wide made of pine. Example: Board = 1" X 3" X 10", rails = 1 1/16" X 1" X 15 ". Making sure to glue the rails so that they extend beyond the end of the board by 2 1/2 " on both ends. Simply cut off the rails. Make sure rails R flat.
I don't know if you have a video like this, but an explanation of what happens when you pass end grain through a thickness planer would be awesome. I love how you always explain things with models, like when you explained bandsaw drift. I'm a visual learner, so these videos help me a lot. I know passing end grain through a thickness planer is very dangerous, and I've heard enough horror stories to make me not want to do it, but just for my own knowledge/curiosity, I would like to know specifically what's going on that makes it react to end grain the way it does. Needless to say, I am fairly new to woodworking.
Great demo. I luckily came across a method that so far has eliminated snipe. I simply feed the board at an angle so that the planer catches the corner of the board first. Bingo!! no snipe. Obviously, the size of the board and the width of the planer are a factor but for most small projects it works.
That's not eliminating the snipe; that's just turning it diagonal and stretching it out into more of a ramp than a step. I'd bet that if you planed two pieces, one diagonal and one straight-on, then measure with an indicator as Matthias does in his video, you'd find the same amount of thickness difference from the leading edge (or corner) into the bulk of the piece, just not all at once.
Hello you have the tools to brush what you advise me is better. , I have seen another video of the table saws Dwaltd which advise me that model what machine there is to brush on flat table and then pass it by the planer t calibrate the wood already squared greetings joan
Hi Matthias Wandel, I've been watching your videos for some time now (about a year) and although I've never done any work with wood, I love watching your projects and experimental videos. My favorite part about your videos though is when you measure the error on a piece to be a couple thou off and you say "ehhh, it's not perfect, but it'll do I guess." To my understanding, a thou stands for a thousandth of a millimeter which is an incredibly small distance. My point is that I always find it humorous when you stress about small errors such as this. So my question is what are the benefits of having this level of accuracy in a project? It seems you're only minutely altering the pieces and I just can't understand all the precautions. Thanks!
A thickness planer is a fairly crude tool. Obviously a board sent through a planer is much nicer than a rough sawn board. But the least of the problems produced by the thickness planer is snipe. A hand plane, scraper or drum sander will eliminate the snipe quickly. If you ran the board through the planer for a shop project, no worries. But if this is for a nice project, not only because of snipe but because of tearout and parallel ridges due to the cutters striking the board as they cut, the board will still need to be sanded, hand planed or scraped before applying a finish. The appearance of the horizontal lines are most obvious when stained.
Slightly misinformed. Yes, the rubber infeed and outfeed rollers are spring-loaded, but that's kind of the point. They need to be in order to keep consistently smooth pressure on the workpiece to prevent more serious variation in thickness. (Notice how your other piece had more variation overall, even though there was less snipe?) Try researching steel infeed/outfeed rollers, chip breakers, and pressure bars. The best option with a cheap planer is to run it long and cut off the snipe later.
Hand-plane, or allow for snipe in length of board, then cut it off, or use a side-lipped sled and sacrificial longer rails that even out the rollers while blades are over workpiece (clamp runners and workpiece in place on sled using side lips and wedges).
Yeah that's what I usually do. Just account for the snipe at either end and then cut it off. Obviously this is wasteful, but its usually only like 3-4 in at either end.
Martin Kopec ...or you could just run a belt sander over it. I find that the surface is much more smooth after belt sanding anyway; which is why I always do this.
can you lift up on the wood as it goes in. using the first roller as a fulcrum to press the front of the wood down as it contact the blades? and the same on the other side as it leaves the blades?
+ason robert It depends. snipe comes from two sources. If it's the planer head moving that won't fix it, if you've got a better planer you still get snipe but that snipe can be fixed by lifting the wood up and holding the board flat against the table face.
+ason robert yes that does work. on the "better" planers there is a roller on a bar in front of the infeed and one on the outfeed side which do exactly that. on some of the cheaper planers they have a receiving plate that angles up slightly, same thing on the outfeed side. if your planer doesn't have that feature it is an easy fix to retrofit your planer with either the extended table or roller.
+Hans Jonsson no, place a piece of aluminium bar on the outfeed table and let it overhang the cutterhead so the knives can pick it up. rotate your cutter head in it's usual cutting rotation slowly. if the knives lift the bar up and move it ahead, then your table is too low. if the knives don't touch and don't move the bar your table is too high. ideally the knives should move the bar very slightly when they scratch past. it's a pretty delicate balance. the bar should move ahead slightly without being lifted up
There is a video on Jerry's Machines site that explains the problem better (IMO) but has a very similar fix. I like your dowel stops better as they seem as adequate for the use and easier to make. BTW, Great videos, l enjoy them immensely. My wife calls my woodworking video watching my wood porn.
I've got a problem with snipe on thickness sander which I think could be getting worse. Is it my poor adjustment of the pressure springs on the infeed and outfeed rollers, or could the head be gaining movement from general wear and tear? (I use my thickness sander a lot!)
Matthias: after I installed new rollers, my planer gives a bad snipe on the exit end of the board. I only see it on thin stock . If I help pull the stock out of the planer I don't get it. I think I may have done something wrong on my repair. Is there chain timing to worry about , because I had to remove the chains? It is such a pain because it ruins the last cross on a lot of pieces and affects my yield After the lenten rush, I can make a video and show you. Thanks , Dennis
Would adding a third roller (somehow) to the in feed side work, so when the second in feed roller bites, they will both hold the piece level before it hits the blades?
Hello. I have the same Delta planer. Do you have a problem with the roller wheels not feeding the stock through? I have to pull some of my stock through. I assume the rubber on the rollers has gotten too hard to do what it was intended. Thanks.
That's a solution. But most lunch box planers have infeed and outfeed tables that can be adjusted. If they're too low they need to be raised, especially at the ends/the edges farthest away from the cutting head.
I thought in my language we had a nice word for this machine: a "vandiktebank" but I admit the german "Dickenhobelmaschine" beats that. I wonder though why the solution isn't just a lock on the planer head so it can't move up
@OldSchoolSkill neither new nor unique... they've bee used in cabinet shops as long as I can remember.. more for repeatability of thickness than to prevent snipe but they work for both purposes on portable planers.. not so much on bigger planers though, as they have rollers on the table too that contribute to snipe
@Matthiaswandel yairfe - mona accidentally reversed the r & i --- this vid is actually off to the right side of this under suggestions "THICKNESS PLANER"
+tjbalistic Thou is short for the imperial measurement "thousands of an inch". 8 thou is much, much less than 8 millimeters as that would be catastrophic really.
tjbalistic Oh, I see... Why THOUgh? (mehe) Seems to me that would be really confusing. That being said the imperial system is so weird anyway, might as well make it weirder :P
+tjbalistic Yeah, people tend to go both ways with it depending on who I'm working with. People that tend to work with coatings or laminates, things that always tend to be really thin, always say mil. If they tend to work with tight tolerance only once in awhile they use thou. When I'm working around new people I use thou, since it's kind of embarrassing for the odd guy that will always seem to ask what a mil is while all the guys he works with give him odd looks - it really points out the new guy, lol.
When I first learned about "mils" in engineering school, I was taken aback that the imperial system had so permeated electrical engineering. But I guess we are stuck with it for a while.
So a planar will create snipe on the first few inches, but when the fresh wood hits the next roller, it will lift it up only to the sniped height, thus producing a second snipe, right? So the whole board is actually full of asymptotic sniping?
I really appreciate the thorough investigation and explanation. The model helped a lot. And your solution could not have been more effective.
Seen a lot of videos trying to explain/fix snipe, but none of them come close to your explanation. Your diagram was awesome, it wasn't a thing of beauty, but it got the job done. Excellent preference for function over form.
Thanks for this video, very well explained. I`ve had this problem with my Dewalt planer for years and could never figure out what was happening. Was thinking about the spacer you use. the way you made it it`s only useful for one thickness. An improvement on that idea would be to use shims on either end of the spacer. a series of 1/8 spacers for instance. allowing you to adjust fairly quickly.
I plan to make multiple set of spacers. Very simple to make.
This is something that has bugged me for years with my planer. I didn't know how to fix it. I always just cut the ends off to get rid o it.Thanks for this video. I think I'm going to try to make some of those sticks to lock it down.
Well, the one I bought is better than my old Delta. Haven't used it that much yet though.
Dust hood that comes with it needs to be hooked up to a vacuum, so made a straight-out chute for it.
Thanks for the insight. My planer used to be really good considering the price I paid for it, but as I use it more the snipe keeps getting worse. Keep up the good work!
Ha! Just commented on your other video about sticking with my old Delta planer, and here it is! Those infeed/outfeed tables for the Delta are glorified document inboxes. That's what I use them for in my shop.
I use an 8' long melamine-covered board with a cleat on it as the "base" of my planer. I put that through the machine and then just run my boards through on top of that. It helps with snipe a bit, but that Delta has always been the king of snipe. I will have to try out the spacer blocks. I hadn't thought of that.
Thanks Matthias I appreciate all your video info and the way you explain it in simple terms for us greenhorns.
We'd gotten a newer, larger thickness planner when I was in Jr High. It was a monster and honestly I've not see one that big since. 36" wide and you could feed it lumber as thick as I believe about 18" though I don't know how you get a timber that massive in our shop. As it was we didn't get a larger planner because the size up from that older one we got wouldn't fit. But as nice and big as this vintage piece of machinery was. And when I say vintage it was vintage in 1971 when I was in Jr High. The shop teacher went on to teach us all about it, how to use it and what to expect. Like snipe. So buy lumber larger than you want so it will be the right size after you mill it down to the perfect size.
Great video Matthias:
I have a Dewalt 733 which is 13 years old and it has locks , but you still get a small amount of snipe. I find that if I lift the board up as it is being fed in , the snipe is minimized. After 13 years the infeed roller was very badly worn, so I just took it all apart and replaced both rollers and the bearings. It tool about 2 hours and cost me $90 for the parts. After I got it apart I noticed the drive belt is worn and will probably go in a few years (about $35) next time
When the boards you start with are just barely longer than what you make, that doesn't work.
Much of my wood is cut from firewood pieces, so I often need the full length.
I have a harbour freight planer and it has some snipe as it has no in or out feed tables. The snipe seems to be the same depth as well as length on the work piece. If I need the work piece to be snipe free I just cut my piece longer than needed to eliminate it. It is a waste of material but it works for me. Most of the projects I make is with reclaimed wood and pallets that are rustic anyway. A belt sander cleans up and feathers the snipe away.
Even my DeWalt, with four screws, leaves some snipe. The only method for eliminating it, that I have found easily repeatable, are... 1.) Buy a 2x4 and just cut it into pieces and use them as sacrificial pieces at the start/end of a work piece, and 2.) On long boards just literally lift it pretty hard as it enters/exits, to help the roller keep it down. The tables help a bit, but my DeWalt tables aren't perfectly flat, so even they don't support all that well. They make it better, but they aren't the singular solution. a single 2x4 can give you a ton of sacrificial pieces... but you will need to clean your planer knives more due to sap. The common boards (pine etc), work well, but cost a little more than the 2x4s, but also have less sap.
Snipe is a problem with all portable planers but I noticed that the new Ridgid seems to have the most solid in-feed and out feed tables.
As well as a locking mechanism.
Mostly I don't bother with spacers. But if you do make spacers, you only need them for the final thickness, because the snipe from previous passes just gets planed off.
When it gets more stucking than feeding, I take a rag soaked in alcohol or something like that and I clean the rollers with it. Looks like rollers get slippery after planing boards high in resin (I hope I used words correctly, I'm not too good in english)
Just have to say, you have a lot of great ideas, but in this case, you'd have to make spacers for each thickness that you would ever want to plane. IMO this isn't a solution. Just a stop gap.
After learning more about planers, and seeing some of the solutions, and the amount of material I've had to throw out because of snipe, I would never buy a planer without a snipe or head lock mechanism. If I have to pay $200 more for a planer with a head lock, I'd make that up in the first 6 months in lost material.
I have an 8 year old delta that the whole head mechanism lifts up and down and it has done this since new. Simply because Delta didn't care about how they made it. A simple stop collar on the lifting shafts would prevent this. Unfortunately there isn't space to add one aftermarket.
That's quite a bit to spend on a small planer, but I guess you must have gotten good use out of it for it to get worn out like that.
Some extremely useful comments Matthias. Thank you!
Very cool model to show what is happening. I have a similar cheap delta. What I have done to get rid of the snipe, is to just do my final thickness pass on the planer. Spacers is a cool idea though!
Hi Mathias, I would like to make a planer sled to use with my 24'' wide Grizzly planer to be able to joint one side of 8' warped boards. I have seen some videos of people making torsion boxes for their planer sleds, while some others use just a flat piece of plywood. I’m contemplating the need for a tension box vs. a single flat sheet for the sled, the single sheet hopefully being lighter and easier to handle yet possibly somewhat flexible. I obviously don't want it to flex and affect the flattness of the plane on the board planed using the sled, nor do I want snipe in there. I guess it makes sense that if the planer table is flat and the infeed and outfeed board supports are in plane with the table, and close enough together to avoid any sagging, then a flat single sheet should suffice as the sled. I guess the torsion box is to avoid flexing of the sled from infeed board support to planer table, and from planer table to outfeed board support. I also suppose that if the workpiece is strong enough not to flex then the support sled wouldn’t need to be too rigid once its shimmed flat if workpiece and sled are secured to each other somehow in the flat position. But I suppose if the work piece can flex, then the sled needs to be strong enough not to flex if the distance between work support and planer table would allow flexing to occur. Where as if I could avoid any flexing between board supports and planer table, then simply using an initial flat work table to securely shim and fasten warped boards to flat plywood/sled would suffice to produce acceptable flat planed boards. Anyhow, to clarify and to make a long comment even longer, I want an 8’, light weight planer sled. Do you have any suggestions or thoughts towards designs and materials for this? Maybe just different sleds for different needs is the answer. What sizes and designs do you think would be most useful? Thank you! I know you know
Thank you, Michael Flax.
Sounds like you could also: A. plane your stock as a single piece, B. use a 'sacrificial' board first and last, and run multiple pieces through end to end, C. if the columns are exposed, make some hold down clamps to keep the head from moving upwards as pieces enter and leave. All of the above would be a pain in the rear though.
Thanks for the video. I always wondered what problems cheap planers have versus the expensive ones.
Hello and thank you for the informative and helpful video, i have a question and would appreciate if you have an answer, the rollers has 2 types of springs, one is less hard than the 3 others, any idea to which end of which roller it belongs????
Thanks a million
To eliminate snipe on a portable planer, could you raise the head all
the way up, clamp or fix the head at the posts and threaded drive rods,
then build a raising and lowering bed? Thoughts? Keeping he bed
parallel and rigid may be the challenge.
I hate my delta plane. My snipe is far worse than yours. I gave up trying to eliminate it and just run longer boards through and cut the ends off. I'm going to try your trick today!!!! thanks.
Love your videos, very informative!!
I wish I could remember what brand of planer my high school shop class had. The thing had a belt drive and platen it slid on under the blades. Maybe it was modified by one of the teachers. I don't remember any snipe from it, but at that age, is snipe even on your radar? lol
Even my 4-adjuster screw DW-735 snipes, and it was $600... Has done it since new.
Would be interesting to see dial indicator readings at each corner of the head as a board enters/exits...
I have a makita 2012NB planer, it's a well constructed machine but it leaves a very noticeable snipe. i was thinking a lot about this problem, i will test what happens if i set the cutting height and adding 4 wedges (2 in the rear, 2 in the front) after in order to block the head (that would easily admit height corrections) i think this should work like the blocking devices you show but adjustable. i would like to know your opinion.
When your talking about the width of 2 human hairs I can work around that lol
The problem I'm having is when gluing stock together to make legs for my project. If there is a slight deviation on the gluing side then it leaves a noticeable gap. I'm having to either leave the boards a little long and cut off the ends or feed through a sacrificial piece before and after the cut. Wish there were a better solution 😕
You make a spacer for every thickness of your stock as it progresses? :P
Another solution is to glue a rail to each side 5 " longer than the short board you want to plane. So, it will look like the letter H. Then plane as normal and the snipe will be on the rails instead of the board. The rails can be 1/16" thicker than the board and 1" wide made of pine. Example: Board = 1" X 3" X 10", rails = 1 1/16" X 1" X 15 ". Making sure to glue the rails so that they extend beyond the end of the board by 2 1/2 " on both ends. Simply cut off the rails. Make sure rails R flat.
Try making a indfeed and outfeed table and use a dusk Collector To prevent Shavings from gathering underneath.
I suppose, but that snipe that you get off the snipe is already too small to be detectable.
a little wax on metal bed helps to prevent that. I use just a candle to wax either bed or wood itself :)
I don't know if you have a video like this, but an explanation of what happens when you pass end grain through a thickness planer would be awesome. I love how you always explain things with models, like when you explained bandsaw drift. I'm a visual learner, so these videos help me a lot. I know passing end grain through a thickness planer is very dangerous, and I've heard enough horror stories to make me not want to do it, but just for my own knowledge/curiosity, I would like to know specifically what's going on that makes it react to end grain the way it does. Needless to say, I am fairly new to woodworking.
Great demo. I luckily came across a method that so far has eliminated snipe. I simply feed the board at an angle so that the planer catches the corner of the board first. Bingo!! no snipe. Obviously, the size of the board and the width of the planer are a factor but for most small projects it works.
That's not eliminating the snipe; that's just turning it diagonal and stretching it out into more of a ramp than a step. I'd bet that if you planed two pieces, one diagonal and one straight-on, then measure with an indicator as Matthias does in his video, you'd find the same amount of thickness difference from the leading edge (or corner) into the bulk of the piece, just not all at once.
Thank you for taking the time for this video.
Hello you have the tools to brush what you advise me is better. , I have seen another video of the table saws Dwaltd which advise me that model what machine there is to brush on flat table and then pass it by the planer t calibrate the wood already squared greetings joan
Hi Matthias Wandel,
I've been watching your videos for some time now (about a year) and although I've never done any work with wood, I love watching your projects and experimental videos. My favorite part about your videos though is when you measure the error on a piece to be a couple thou off and you say "ehhh, it's not perfect, but it'll do I guess." To my understanding, a thou stands for a thousandth of a millimeter which is an incredibly small distance. My point is that I always find it humorous when you stress about small errors such as this. So my question is what are the benefits of having this level of accuracy in a project? It seems you're only minutely altering the pieces and I just can't understand all the precautions. Thanks!
He's talking thousandths of an inch. So there is approx. 40 thousandths of an inch in a millimeter.
A thickness planer is a fairly crude tool. Obviously a board sent through a planer is much nicer than a rough sawn board. But the least of the problems produced by the thickness planer is snipe. A hand plane, scraper or drum sander will eliminate the snipe quickly. If you ran the board through the planer for a shop project, no worries. But if this is for a nice project, not only because of snipe but because of tearout and parallel ridges due to the cutters striking the board as they cut, the board will still need to be sanded, hand planed or scraped before applying a finish. The appearance of the horizontal lines are most obvious when stained.
As stated, he's talking 1/1000 of an inch. That is very small, but you can definitely see and feel .004 (4/1000)
Nothing unusual about stock getting stuck. It happens.
Slightly misinformed. Yes, the rubber infeed and outfeed rollers are spring-loaded, but that's kind of the point. They need to be in order to keep consistently smooth pressure on the workpiece to prevent more serious variation in thickness. (Notice how your other piece had more variation overall, even though there was less snipe?) Try researching steel infeed/outfeed rollers, chip breakers, and pressure bars. The best option with a cheap planer is to run it long and cut off the snipe later.
Great info for someone who wants to buy a small planer.
Thank you for the input !…
Maybe an extra set of rollers on the outside of the existing. Might be on to something :o
thanks Mathias ! love your videos
I've seen videos of guys making planer beds that support the boards steadily and have zero snipe. Have you tried a planer bed on yours?
make your own one out of wood. would be a great project.
Hand-plane, or allow for snipe in length of board, then cut it off, or use a side-lipped sled and sacrificial longer rails that even out the rollers while blades are over workpiece (clamp runners and workpiece in place on sled using side lips and wedges).
Yeah that's what I usually do. Just account for the snipe at either end and then cut it off. Obviously this is wasteful, but its usually only like 3-4 in at either end.
Martin Kopec
...or you could just run a belt sander over it. I find that the surface is much more smooth after belt sanding anyway; which is why I always do this.
I tried the alcohol and problem seems to be solved. Thanks!
can you lift up on the wood as it goes in. using the first roller as a fulcrum to press the front of the wood down as it contact the blades? and the same on the other side as it leaves the blades?
+ason robert You can do that if you want to, but it won't fix the snipe.
+ason robert It depends. snipe comes from two sources. If it's the planer head moving that won't fix it, if you've got a better planer you still get snipe but that snipe can be fixed by lifting the wood up and holding the board flat against the table face.
+ason robert yes that does work. on the "better" planers there is a roller on a bar in front of the infeed and one on the outfeed side which do exactly that. on some of the cheaper planers they have a receiving plate that angles up slightly, same thing on the outfeed side.
if your planer doesn't have that feature it is an easy fix to retrofit your planer with either the extended table or roller.
Great explanation! What I can't figure out is why I experience a similar sniping on a jointer? Any ideas?
Hans Jonsson Outfeed table too low.
Hans Jonsson Outfeed table too low.
Ok, I'll try to raise it. It should be flush with the cutter or...?
Hans Jonsson I don't know specifics, but I am pretty sure they should not actually be flush. If you can manage it, probably just halve the difference?
+Hans Jonsson no, place a piece of aluminium bar on the outfeed table and let it overhang the cutterhead so the knives can pick it up. rotate your cutter head in it's usual cutting rotation slowly. if the knives lift the bar up and move it ahead, then your table is too low.
if the knives don't touch and don't move the bar your table is too high.
ideally the knives should move the bar very slightly when they scratch past. it's a pretty delicate balance. the bar should move ahead slightly without being lifted up
@Matthiaswandel He probably means yairfe powered hand planer mounted in a homemade adjustable table
There is a video on Jerry's Machines site that explains the problem better (IMO) but has a very similar fix. I like your dowel stops better as they seem as adequate for the use and easier to make.
BTW, Great videos, l enjoy them immensely. My wife calls my woodworking video watching my wood porn.
I've got a problem with snipe on thickness sander which I think could be getting worse. Is it my poor adjustment of the pressure springs on the infeed and outfeed rollers, or could the head be gaining movement from general wear and tear? (I use my thickness sander a lot!)
Does this happen with a drum sander table? I'd imagine it would do so at least right at the tips of the wood u are working on, but I could be wrong
LOVE your videos but at the end there when you hand was in the mouth of the planer even though it was off just gave me the willies for a second.
Matthias:
after I installed new rollers, my planer gives a bad snipe on the exit end of the board. I only see it on thin stock . If I help pull the stock out of the planer I don't get it. I think I may have done something wrong on my repair. Is there chain timing to worry about , because I had to remove the chains?
It is such a pain because it ruins the last cross on a lot of pieces and affects my yield
After the lenten rush, I can make a video and show you.
Thanks ,
Dennis
@web4deb I was just about to write that: simply feed longer pieces and cut off the ends...
Would adding a third roller (somehow) to the in feed side work, so when the second in feed roller bites, they will both hold the piece level before it hits the blades?
@Dokidokip i have no idea but he explains it all verry good and it's fun to watch lol
very innovative solution. Good video, thumbs up
whenever possible I plane the boards before I cut them to the final length which removes the "snipe".
"...but they're kind of awful and..." Woah! Intensity warning on this video.
That user has no videos uploaded.
excellent video, very well explained. thank you very much.
Hi. How thick are your planer bars ?
Hello. I have the same Delta planer. Do you have a problem with the roller wheels not feeding the stock through? I have to pull some of my stock through. I assume the rubber on the rollers has gotten too hard to do what it was intended. Thanks.
feed a longer than needed board. cut off the ends that are gouged or so called sniped at the ends.
It sounds like the solution is to start with longer lumber than you intend to use in the project and cut off the sniped bits ;)
That's a solution. But most lunch box planers have infeed and outfeed tables that can be adjusted. If they're too low they need to be raised, especially at the ends/the edges farthest away from the cutting head.
I thought in my language we had a nice word for this machine: a "vandiktebank" but I admit the german "Dickenhobelmaschine" beats that. I wonder though why the solution isn't just a lock on the planer head so it can't move up
Very helpful, thank you!
So did you get any buyers remorse on that advanced planer?
Parabéns 👏👏👏... ótimo trabalho
when do you do one this is a ideal for my store
@51mm5 -- that was the same thought I had.
Is this a Mastercraft sponsored video?
+Jaime Muñoz Matthias does not have sponsored videos.
You may have done this video partially because you enjoy saying the word "snipe." I see a slight smirk. Don't blame you. snipe! snipe! snipe!
@OldSchoolSkill neither new nor unique... they've bee used in cabinet shops as long as I can remember.. more for repeatability of thickness than to prevent snipe but they work for both purposes on portable planers.. not so much on bigger planers though, as they have rollers on the table too that contribute to snipe
From the beginning of the video I thought you were going to launch boards with your planar and "snipe" targets far away with them.
In my experience Its very hard to adjust any sice off planer so I allways Cut my Stock to length after plaining
could this idea be an alternative for a jointer?
what about snipe jointers
the tryforce is on your Machine 0:04
If he can get rid of the snipe then peace will be restored to Hyrule once again
@Matthiaswandel
yairfe - mona accidentally reversed the r & i --- this vid is actually off to the right side of this under suggestions "THICKNESS PLANER"
oldplaner can triforce!
Thanks
Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You Thank You .......
Thou? Do you mean mils? ;-) (I'm guessing you don't want people to think you mean millimeters?)
+tjbalistic Thou is short for the imperial measurement "thousands of an inch". 8 thou is much, much less than 8 millimeters as that would be catastrophic really.
I know. For PCB design, we refer to "thous" as "mils".
tjbalistic Oh, I see... Why THOUgh? (mehe)
Seems to me that would be really confusing. That being said the imperial system is so weird anyway, might as well make it weirder :P
+tjbalistic Yeah, people tend to go both ways with it depending on who I'm working with. People that tend to work with coatings or laminates, things that always tend to be really thin, always say mil. If they tend to work with tight tolerance only once in awhile they use thou. When I'm working around new people I use thou, since it's kind of embarrassing for the odd guy that will always seem to ask what a mil is while all the guys he works with give him odd looks - it really points out the new guy, lol.
When I first learned about "mils" in engineering school, I was taken aback that the imperial system had so permeated electrical engineering.
But I guess we are stuck with it for a while.
@Matthiaswandel : Sorry typing error: his name is yairfe.
genius!
So a planar will create snipe on the first few inches, but when the fresh wood hits the next roller, it will lift it up only to the sniped height, thus producing a second snipe, right? So the whole board is actually full of asymptotic sniping?
Dear Matthias,
How often do you get splinters?
9 years later and we still wanna know
there's a triforce on your router! *_*
ALWAYS Cut to length AFTER planing on ANY planer. Snipe has been around a lot longer than those little planers!
i try and make a model to show it
Please look at the penny on a piece of wood, not even the tenth would be seen. I understand perfection, but ...
Çok iyi. & Sehr gut. & Weri guud.
thousands , thousands
Nope. Thousandths.
Thousands of inches is approximately chains (1/10 furlong). 1 chain = 792 inches.
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(Thank you Mathias !!)