Lunchbox planers in Fine Home Bldg

[Eric DeSilva]

Taunton just did a review of lunchbox planers in the latest issue of Fine Home Building. One thing in the article that intrigued me was a quick way of increasing length of the infeed/outfeed tables--something I'd actually thought about but never tried. In short, it involved taking a 1/2" thick piece of MDF maybe 4' long (I'd probably use 3/4" phenolic ply) and cutting width-wise to fit inside the planer. Then, attaching cleats on either end that are adjustable and fixed to the table. You lose 1/2" of planer capacity, but gain a much longer in/outfeed table and theoretically may fix snipe problems. They also seemed to recommend the outfeed side being bowed up a little.

This all makes some sense to me, just wondering if anyone's actually tried it first hand...

[Paul Demetropoulos]

I have a Dewalt 735 and use that extended bed, it works as good as they say, virtually no snipe.

[Dale Lesak]

The biggest thing with snip is to have a locking cutting head. the machines with the most snip will have the most movement in the head. I have extended the tables on mine and still get snip. biggest improvement was to block the head to keep it from moving.

[Rick Garrity]

The biggest thing with snip is to have a locking cutting head. the machines with the most snip will have the most movement in the head. I have extended the tables on mine and still get snip. biggest improvement was to block the head to keep it from moving.

How did you block the head? And which planer do you have? I have an old 22-540 unit and have been thinking on how to do this.

[paul dyar]

I built my extenion for the 735. So far I have ran some 5' boards through it with no snipe at all.
paul

[Loren Hedahl]

My old Ryobi doesn't have a locking head and won't die.

What I do is use a short piece of scrap ahead and behind the piece I'm planing.

Usually I plane all my stock for a project in one session, so I butt the several pieces end-to-end as they go through and just use my sacrificial pieces for the first and last piece.

The pieces of scrap don't even have to be the same width; just the same thickness.

[Eric DeSilva]

I built my extenion for the 735. So far I have ran some 5' boards through it with no snipe at all.
paul

Your set up makes sense, but the beauty of the FHB set up, seems to me, is that there is no calibration of the infeed/outfeed tables required... If you use a single board through the middle, its auto-magically the exact same height. Has some appeal, since I don't think I'm ever going to max out the height of my lunchbox planer.

[Paul Greathouse]

Scroll down to post #8 on the link below for some pictures of my Delta planer with the auxiliary bed extending through the planer. It works good and was easy to make. It didn't eliminate snipe on the delta planer but did greatly reduce it. You may have even better luck on some of the newer planers.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=95447

[Byron Trantham]

I have a Dewalt 735 and use that extended bed, it works as good as they say, virtually no snipe.

+1 on the extension table option. I found that by adjusting both the in feed and out feed extensions to their highest setting at the outer edges I have eliminated snipe.

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

I've tried that and it works well.

[Tom Hargrove]

A friend of mine built an extension table for his Delta lunch box planer. I have used it on numerous occasions, and the boards come out snipe free. He put an eye bolt near each corner, and uses them to hoist the entire assembly up between the joists in his garage, freeing up space when the planer is not in use.