John,
I bought a Ridgid 13 inch portable planer last year (TP1300), and like it pretty well so far. But the feed speed of 26 feet per minute seems to be a little fast for the best surface finish. In particular, I’m noticing more tearout than I used to get with my previous planer, although I use every proper technique in terms of orienting boards according to grain direction.
My previous planer was a Makita combination 6 inch jointer/12 inch planer 2030 machine from the 1970’s. I remember purchasing an aftermarket gear for it that slowed the feed rate down. That resulted in more cuts per inch and a much finer finish with little, if any, tearout.
Do you think it is worth pursuing trying to slow the feed rate down on the Ridgid? I haven’t looked inside it yet to determine if it would even be do-able, but the idea interests me.
What do you think?
Zolton
Replies
Long winded answer.
Zolton,
I used that model planer for a number of years and I don't recall that it had more or less tearout than other bench top machines. The impression I got with the two speed planers is that there was little, if any, difference in finish quality between the two speed settings. Tear out is affected by other factors especially cutter head and blade geometry, which were more than likely different on the bigger Makita.
There probably isn't too much you can do to change the feed rate of your machine. The gearbox is part of the motor housing and it would be a major project to customize it with new gears. The final drive to the rollers is through a sprocket and chain assembly. You could either decrease the size of the drive sprocket, but I suspect it is already about as small as is practical, which leaves you with trying to increase the size of the sprockets on the rollers which might be possible if you can find sprockets that fit.
If you wanted to get fancy, you could attach a separate motor and gear train off the side of the machine and use that to drive the chain, then you could get any speed you wanted.
One quick thing to try for planing wood with tear out problems is to dampen the wood just before you pass it through the machine, the extra moisture makes quite a difference in the way it cuts. Of course having really sharp set of blades helps, and sometimes, depending on the variety of wood and how clean and knot free it is, blades don't last too long.
Long winded?
John,
I wouldn't say that was a long-winded answer; I'd call it a comprehensive one, and a very interesting perspective. Thank you so much for replying. Your mention of the cutterhead geometry is an aspect of this I never considered.
I generally don't like to get into modifying machinery; most stuff really works pretty well as it was designed, and it's pretty easy to muck something up by trying to make it "better." So I guess I'll leave this Ridgid planer alone. But I will try moistening the lumber if I'm experiencing tear-out problems. I've heard of doing that but never actually tried it. It's worth a shot, certainly.
So, again, thank you for your answer. It was just the right length.
Yours, Zolton
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