Thought my lunchbox planer was dying.

This past weekend, I was reducing some pieces of wood in thickness to make small boxes using my Delta lunchbox style planer. As I was running the pieces through the planer, I reached a point where the wood was just over 1/2" thick when I tried to lower the cutter head the crank didn't want to turn freely. When I tried to back it up it was also jerky like a tooth in the gear had broken. I started to dis assembly my planer and had removed the top and front side cover. I found two problems. One was a large chip of wood from a board (not any of the ones I was currently running) had gotten of the side of the table where it was preventing the cutter head from lowering beyond a certain point. The second problem I found was that in addition to the screw holding the raise/lower crank to the vertical shaft, there was a set screw coming out the side of the handle. This set screw had worked loose so it was hitting the housing around the base of the handle when I tried to rotate the handle. there was no loctite or nylock on this set screw, so it had worked loose through normal use and vibration.

Once I tightened the set screw and got everything back together, the raise lower worked just fine and I was able to complete the job.

It does make you feel good when you find out your not going to have to buy a new tool and can fix the old one. I would put a little Locktite on that set screw so that won't happen again.