First planer on the way

[Bertotti]

I have always used jigs or bought surfaced wood. But now that I have around 400 bdft of Cherry I decided it was time for a planer. I broke down, and my wife was ok with it and ordered the New 100th anniversary Powermatic 15" planer with the helical head. I saw the surface from the mill's helical head planer and it was mind-boggling how nice it was right out of the planer.

But never having set up a planer I'm not sure what I'll need to do other than level tables. It seems a lot of equipment has little tweaks that need to be done for even better performance so my question is, does anyone know what little tweaks I may want to do right out of the box with the Powermatic? Thanks, everyone!

 

[CeeJay]

I have the same planer. It’s a great machine.

The main tweaks I have done when it was installed or relocated were aligning the tables, and setting the level of the lower guide rollers. I find that getting the lower guide rollers level across the table and only 1 or 2 thou above the tables is the best adjustment for minimising snipe.

I also added the Wixey digital readout which was a great mod.

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[Bertotti]

I was flip-flopping paying the extra 100$ for the anniversary model just to get the black paint scheme and the floor mat and digital depth gauge. In the end, the black paint scheme won me over.
Thanks for the hints on the rollers I was wondering about them. I saw one vid online where the guy raised them more than that and said it was great but the physics of it doesn't make any sense to me in that case.

 

[CeeJay]

That’s well worth it- I paid $75 for the digital depth gauge and fitted it myself.

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[Thompmd]

Congratulations!! I will be following(hopefully contributing lol)this thread as I have a planer on order as well! How long did it take after you placed your order before you received it? I ordered mine in early February when they had their sale. Let me know how things progress.

 

[Bertotti]

I only just did so yesterday. The place I go is Stan Houstons and the guys tell me they already had three on order. I don't know when they ordered them but they expected them in the near future. I have been watching online and have watched the time frames slowly slip back. I do believe some places are getting them but they are trickling in. I have no idea how long I will have to wait. Good luck with your wait! Which unit did you opt for? I almost went for a 20" instead but that extra 1400$ for an extra 5" seemed rather steep to me. I understand the larger motor adds significantly to that but I had to sit back and think about how often I would actually use that much width.

 

[Thompmd]

I got the 20”HH , I wish it had the 100th anniversary graphics, I really like how it looks(maybe silly but that’s me). Another PM vendor I also got a bid from had the planer in stock but not the jointer. The reason I bought them at Woodcraft is I got an additional 3.5% off(13.5% off total).

I would love to have even wider but I just can’t justify for the limited use and the price really starts to jump. It also changes my current dust collection.  Seems like the same monster we all wrestle with.

I also purchased a 50” aluminum straight edge made by Taylor tools. They are guaranteed straight to .003 over the entire 50”(mine was between .0015-.002) which helped w set-up. I think Amazon has them for about $45

 

[Bertotti]

Thanks for the heads up on the straight edge. I was looking at some today. I was sorely tempted to go with the 20" but it was a significant jump and I think I would rather add a jointer than wider capacity at this time. I liked Powermatic colors but I really like the anni color scheme.

 

[Bertotti]

I got the call today. It arrived at the equipment company so now the wait to have it delivered. Should be in the next two days. It took me and the store by surprise! I didn't expect it until late May or early June!

 

[Alanbach]

[member=74149]Bertotti[/member] - Above you referred to someone who had raised the bed rollers more than a couple of thousandths and how that did not make sense to you. It just depends on the wood you run. If you run a lot of wood that has already been surfaced then 2 thousandths will work fine but if you run a lot of rough cut lumber the planer might struggle to feed it smoothly at one or two thousandths. The manual will probably address this. The bed rollers just provide a tiny bit of clearance to allow for the initial inconsistencies on the surface of the wood before your initial milling. If those inconsistencies (rough cut lumber) are great then a slightly larger offset may be necessary.

 

[Bertotti]

I do not have the manual for the 100th model yet. But I have been reading the manual for the standard 15" with the HH head. It says those rollers are adjustable from 0 - .006" above the table, less needed for already flattened wood and more for ruff sawn. It just seems to me that with them up you would eventually be looking at making the center of the board thinner than the ends.

 

[Alanbach]

The cutting takes place directly above the roller so that distance stays the same. Think of it like a pivot point on a teeter totter. The ends go up and down and those elevations change constantly but the pivot point remains fixed. I hope that helps.

 

[Birdhunter]

I have the same planer. I find if I put downward pressure on the front of the board as it first enters the machine and on the end of the board as it exits the machine, I don’t get any visible snipe. The other trick I’ve learned is to feed the board back through without changing the depth of cut for the last pass. I call it a whisper cut. The finish on the wood is remarkable. I have the 8” helical head jointer and the two make easy work of dimensioning boards.

 

[Bertotti]

Yea, no, I still don't get it but I will understand it better once I have it in hand and play with it. The positive and negative is it is all ruff sawn lumber and it doesn't seem they sealed the ends before drying so I have a fair amount of splitting in the ends. Actually makes me a bit mad to think about it. I think it was a cost-saving choice since I got such a good deal on it.

 

[Michael Kellough]

Yea, no, I still don't get it but I will understand it better once I have it in hand and play with it. The positive and negative is it is all ruff sawn lumber and it doesn't seem they sealed the ends before drying so I have a fair amount of splitting in the ends. Actually makes me a bit mad to think about it. I think it was a cost-saving choice since I got such a good deal on it.

Then you don’t need to worry about snipe for this batch since you’ll be cutting the ends off anyway. Just try to resist cutting the ends before you plane.

 

[Bertotti]

Agreed, not too much to worry about with this round and it will give me some leeway to experiment with the roller hights to see how they affect the leading and trailing edge snipe. And all is not lost with the bits cut off some are still going to be wide enough to use for other things and some will make a nice little fire for some pork chops. Nothing like unuseable Cherry scraps for a nice piece of meat.

 

[Bertotti]

[attachimg=1]I got it in my basement but I can't place it until I have the area rearranged and wired. I was on my own so it took a bit of time to get it in.

 

[CeeJay]

Wow it looks mean. Stealth mode planing!

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[Bertotti]

It was a half-inch narrower than the door it came through. I feel like I spent three hours in the gym lifting weights after several months off. The shipping oil cleaned off easily with some zep orange cleaner. I have the extensions on but not leveled. I have a bit of wire pulling to get her fired up. So, another day's work after I get back from work. I am trying to be patient so it all, set up, placement wiring etc, only needs to be done once.