that planer level problem a couple of us had

[krazyderek]

remember, some of us had that problem where the planer woule leave little levels at either end of the board that are lower then the rest??

i was putting the finaly thickness into another neck blank and i decided to try and use the left side of the planer, to my amazement the board came out afterwards with no low level parts.. i tried back in the middle and right.... they came back.... tried back on the left..... they went away

so maybe you guys might want to try that, i don't kow why it works, it just does, thought i'd share.

[daveq]

I found out that mine has a cutter head lock duh!!! Once I started using it, my troubles have gone away. I don't know why I didn't realize this earlier - that's the whole point of having the lock in the first place.

[Setch]

For the record, the problem you're experiencing is called 'snipe'. Given that the problem doesn't occour on one side of the planer, I'd hazard a guess that it's an adjustment issue, and that one side's adjustment is squiffy. That said, it's supposedly pretty rare to find a planer which doesn't exhibit at least a tiny bit of snipe.

[daveq]

I was reading a magazine a few weeks ago that rated power tools. In it, they had a series of planers. They compared how well they did in various categories - one of them being snipe. The description for my model said something like "with the cutter head locked, it produced the least amount of snipe". After reading that, I remembered seeing the locking lever and it all made sense.

So, they all do produce some amount of snipe but locking the head really made a big difference - to the point where I need a magnifying glass to see it. Without locking, it was easily visible.

I don't know how many planers have the locking option.

Derek - are you in/out feed tables adjustable? Mine has two screws under the area where the tables meet the main body. The screws adjust the height of the table and also the level.