I recently purchased a 20” JET planer. Having read the instruction manual that comes with the unit, JET advises that I don’t plane anything to less than ½” thick?
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I plan to plane down to 1/8” in some cases. I did a test plane the other day, down to 3/8” and had no problems.
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Has anyone come across this? Or is the manual incorrect? Did I read this correctly?
daleM
Replies
Hadn't heard of that... whenever I plane to less than say 1/2", I usually feed the piece in on top of a piece of plywood or mdf.
Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Like Glaucon. I also plane thinner pieces on top of a piece of plywood. However, stock which is only 1/8" is pretty thin. i usually don't go less than 1/4" even using a piece of plywood under the stock.
ChipTam
Agree. Seems like you coud do it by hand with a jig and a jack plane.Glaucon
If you don't think too good, then don't think too much...
Hello it depends on how wide the piece is you you are milling.I had a 12 1 /2 " dewalt and could take my wood down to 1/8 without any trouble,but the pieces were only around 6 to 8" wide.If you try to go to wide with that thin of a board it will start waving(hope you understand what I mean)So what you can do if it is a real wide piece is to spray some temp adhesive on one side,Not on both boards,just the plywood you are laying it on.This will keep it nice and smooth as it goes thru the planer.Have you considered a drum sander?This is what I use to take my wood down to that thickness now as I use a great deal of burl and figured wood.I make my own veneers on it.Good luck.
Ken
I used to regularly take stock down to 3/8" and 1/4" with a 24" planer. You should not have any problems doing that. 1/8" or less, I use a drum sander on shop sawn veneers.
Jeff
Those sort of manuals will always be on the comfort side.As others have noted it is entirely feasible to machine plane as thin as 1/8th, with or without sliding back-up aids etc. Machine set up is more critical, and the nature of the timber has a direct effect.
What timber are you planing? Disintegrations can be quite dramatic.
Dale,
As others have stated, it is possible to mill wood down to 1/8" thick. There are some tricks and precautions that should be used and observed.
The first is the use of a slave board. This is a board that is clamped to, and lays on top of all three tables - infeed, outfeed, and the cutting table. Two clamps are placed on either side of the infeed table to prevent the board from being pulled through the machine. I use a piece of baltic birch plywood that I buff to a slippery surface with paste wax. Plywood, MDF, and even Melamine will work. The thin stock is then put through the machine riding on top of the slave board.
Without the slave board, the thin stock would be distorted by all of the different rollers carrying and moving the wood through the machine. This would cause it to flex and get sniped or chewed up by the blades.
The trick to planing thin stock successfully, is to feed it into the machine at a downward angle. As an example, instead of just laying the wood on the infeed table an pushing it through, lift up the back end of the board ten to fifteen degrees and use the other hand to place a little downward pressure on the front end being fed into the machine. Let the board slip through your hands until it is about half way through, and then reverse the process on the outfeed side of the machine. This will prevent the back end from being sniped, which on thin stock is likely to happen.
Be aware that this isn't a 100% foolproof method. I had a piece of figured cherry, 5" wide by 36" long by 3/16" thick detonate inside of one of my large planers. And by detonate, I mean that board exploded and sent wood shrapnel back out of the infeed side of the machine. I had run about a dozed pieces of the same size just prior without any issue.
Keep the blades sharp and take your time. 1/8" is definitely possible.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
Dan Kornfeld, Owner/President - Odyssey Wood Design, Inc.
Edited 1/13/2006 11:01 pm ET by jackiechan
Dale,
I plane my stuff down to paper thinness. I just take lighter and lighter cuts the thinner I get but I don't even start worring about it untill I'm under 3/8ths thick.. I own 20 inch Grizzly and I'll bet I've planned well over 25,000 bd.ft of stuff in it..
I can plane everything from great big thick timbers to darn near veneer. Infeed and outfeed is important.. but not how thin or thick it gets. If I'm planning thin stock I make sure the blades are sharp and I'm not afraid to pull a set of semi sharp blades out to replace them with fresh blades.. I'll replace the semi sharp one for the first cuts on wood that has been sitting outside and drying for a long time.. As carefull as I can be about brushing the wood off and then going after it with air pressure too often a piece of grit will rear it's ugly head and then I have that groove that tells me the planner blades have a nick in them.. I'd rather not do that on a freshly sharpened set of blades so I keep a set of semi sharp blades around for first pass on wood..
Right now I'm down to three sets of blades but normally I have 5 sets..
One in the planner, a set a of semi sharps, a fresh set, one at the sharpeners, and one on the truck to drop off and pick up the sharp set..
I used to sharpen my own planner blades but I found that I use more of the blade when I sharpen, they are never as sharp and they get dull twice as fast. Now I bring all my blades to a printers service.. they do fabulous job and are much cheaper then taking them in to the guy who sharpens my saw blades..
Dale -
Methinks, but it's only my opinion, that planer user instructions ordinarily limit the thickness (thinness) of stock to be run through their machines for safety reasons. It's pretty easy to have the leading edge of that thin piece curl up ever so slightly (do we know about planer sniipe yet!? -grin-), catch on the cutter head and literally explode inside the machine. Probably wouldn't do a lot of damage to life or limb but would scare the devil out of me, anyway.
That said, I worked on a project where the millworkers routinely planed really thin stuff by mounting it on a carrier with carpet tape (double backed stuff) and used a sled underneath to elevate the planer bed in order to arrive at the limited depty of cut. Even so, I'd be extremely careful to 'read' the wood and make sure you send it through the machine in the right direction. Against the grain causing any significant tearout and you've got a situation where it could lift off the carrier and gum up the works.
Just today I finished up some experiments gluing up some 1/8" x 6" wide veneer stuff I'd resawed onto 3/4 mdf. This I then ran through the planer to get down to a thickness more appropriate for 'veneer'. Worked really well but in my case I had the veneer well bonded to a solid substrate.
It can, of course be done. But consider the safety issues and make sure the stock is well supported with no way of getting caught in the cutters!
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