Stop Planer Snipe: How to Align Planer In Feed and Out Feed Tables
I was in the shop this weekend, working the planer hard and as I was going I recognized the machine needed a little maintenance.
I always start with waxing the bed and tables. It’s like cleaning your table saw blade, reduced friction helps it cut cleaner. But I realized as I was waxing that the tables were way out of whack. Without those tables supporting your workpiece you will get snipe.
Snipe is a small divot at the beginning or end of a board caused by the cutter head taking a deeper bite into the wood on entry or exit from the planer. If that’s confusing, I’ll explain by talking about how a planer works.
The dark line near the end of the board indicates the start of the snipe. The material to the right is lower than the material on the left.
Planer Anatomy
Basic anatomy of a planer drawn with an unsteady hand, annotated with my best hand writing.
A planer has 3 basic components. The cutter, the two rollers, and the bed. When you feed a planer the front roller grabs the piece of wood and pulls it into the machine at a steady rate. The rollers push down on the workpiece, keeping it flat to the bed. The cutter is in between the two rollers, so the first roller operates alone until the board can make it past the cutter to the second roller. On exit, the outfeed roller is solely supporting the work piece until it completely exits the cutter and roller.
Snipe
With that in mind, there are two ways a planer creates snipe. Entry and exit of the cutter head. On entry, if your board is at an angle, either tilted up or down, the board is raised up behind the entry roller causing the fixed cutter head to bite a little deeper until the board reaches the second roller which pushes the board back down to the bed.
The same thing can happen on exit. As the board leaves the first roller and as it’s center of gravity shifts off the end of the planer the board wants to dip down, raising the end left in the machine into the cutter head.
In both cases, the snipe is caused by the board not being parallel to the cutter on entry and exit.
Illustration of how snipe is made. See how the board can be angled up into the cutter head. This can happen on both entry and exit.
The easiest way to combat this is to add a reference surface to the front and back of the planer which are in line with the bed of the planer. That way on entry you have more surface area to put the board down on making it easier to keep the board at the proper entry angle. And on exit, the board stays supported and won’t dip down on exit. These reference surfaces are called infeed and outfeed tables.
Infeed/ Outfeed Table Alignment
My planer, the DeWalt 735x has infeed and outfeed tables, but they are adjustable and those adjustments slip over time. When I first tried aligning the tables I had a heck of a time. I used a level and tinkered with the tables for an hour. Tightening here, loosening there, tables slipping, raising, lowering, over and over until eventually everything was where it should be. Then 3 months later they needed adjustment and I realized I could use my jointer sled to align the tables easier and faster than using a level. Here’s how.
Raise the planer and clean the bed and tables.
Slide your sled into place, spanning the infeed and outfeed tables. My sled is just a large, flat board, typically a sheet good (mine is melamine).
Loosen the planer tables so they hang freely.
Clamp the tables to the sled, thereby using the sled as a parallel reference from the bed for the tables. If you want you can even lower the planer to use that as a clamp to keep the sled tight to the planer bed.
Tighten all set screws on the infeed and outfeed tables.
Remove the sled
That’s it, super simple with no measuring or fiddling. By using the sled you cannot mess this up because you are creating a stop for your tables perfectly in line with your planer bed.
For a visual, here’s my quick video guide on how to align the infeed and outfeed tables.