Sappy pine and thickness planers
I recently purchased a DW thickness planer. Today I was cleaning down some boards for a friend, and some of the boards had a lot of sap on the surfaces.
That meant that in order for the boards to feed effectively and be pulled by the roller, I had to clean any obvious large amounts of sap off of the boards. But, there was still sap being smeared over the bed of the planer, which I would clean away with white spirits.
I was thinking if there would be any relatively simple and consistent way to mitigate this.
One thought was to build a bearing sled, another was to make a ridged base board. These would both have a lip on them so that they don’t get pulled through the planer at the same time as the board.
I also toyed with the idea of taking some wallpaper and creating a loop of paper that went across the planer bed, and under the bench that the planer was mounted on. The idea being that the paper would move with the board, but because it was a loop, it would keep going round, regardless of the board length. This may have issues if the board was not straight, but I figure a roll of wallpaper is gonna cost me less in the long run than damaged rollers.
Does anyone else have any jigs that they have used that do a similar thing?
Replies
I have a melamine "base board" across the beds of my DW734. I did it for convenience and to help (a bit) with snipe. But I don't see why it wouldn't help with the sap issue as well. It'd clean up nicely and, with some wax, dang near nothing sticks to it.
I have a trip to the local big box today anyway, so I may try picking up some offcut kitchen counter (that way I get a radius on the leading edge) if they have anything the right sort of size.
I'd be a lot more worried about the feed rollers in the top part of the planer getting gummed up than the planer bed. I had some experience with really sappy wood years ago, and I absolutely won't run it through a thickness planer again.
Running an occasional pitch pocket through a machine is ok. But if this is as sappy as it sounds, I wouldn't bother.
So, what do you do now then? Are you now more selective in the wood you buy, or do you clean it first, or do you prepare it a different way?
As I said, this was a favour for a friend, so I wasn't involved in the selection or purchase, but it seems a shame to just refuse the request.
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