Taming Woodmaster snipe

[Brian Coe]

Anyone here with a Woodmaster who has successfully eliminated or significantly reduced snipe on their machine? I have the 25" model, and it works well, but snipes significantly worse on the ends than other planers I have used. I have adjusted spring tension up, down, etc. lightened up on final cuts, etc. and have improved snipe some but never quite enough to satisfy me. Would welcome and input or advice on further tinkering. Does the optional spiral insert head make any difference? It's a pricey addition. I notice they now have an extra heavy duty model that comes with the insert head standard.

Thanks for any thoughts!

Brian C.

[Neal Clayton]

no, the spiral head won't affect snipe.

rubber rollers with alot of spring travel are the culprit, i'm afraid. they're like that for grip on molding stock, but they can't hold a large board down during planing when it passes the first roller. the only way to eliminate it is perfectly aligned outfeed support.

[James White]

I am having the same problem with my WM 725. I think the culprit is the cast iron bed flexing under the load of the four rollers. Then once the board gets past the two infeed rollers it springs back up. If you put a strait edge diagnaly accross the bed you can actualy see the bed flex by pressing down at the center of the bed.

I have tried everything I could think of. This would include newly installed sharp blades, lightening up on roller pressure. Lifting the board for the first 8" going in and the last 8"coming out. I have the infeed extension table so there is plenty support there. But nothing I have done will resolve this. I have just come to accept it and only run stock that is an extra 12" long. I hope someone will advise a solution because I hate this.

I love the machine it just chews through anything I throw at it but this one issue is a pain in the butt.

James

[Bob Wingard]

I reduced my feed roller pressure by a great amount. The factory suggests against this, as it could lead to kickbacks, but I had my rollers recovered with a rubber that is much softer and tackier than the stock urethane ones. I still don't stand directly in front of the machine, just in case. This has reduced my snipe a bunch, but it's still there. I just feed a piece of scrap before & after, and live with it.


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[James White]

Bob/Brain,

How much snipe do you get? I am at the low end of the factory feed roller settings of +1/16" -1/8". My snipe now varies from .008"-.010" both at the beginning and end of the board. Before I lightened up the roller pressure it was alway .010". Not much of an improvement. I think I may lighten it up a bit more. I think WM has to be concerned about liability when recommending the amount of feed roller pressure.

James

[Bill White]

Try this.
Lift the tail end on entry. Left the nose end on exit. Just a little goes a long way. It's a habit w/me when I'm planin'.
Bill

[george wilson]

If I lift my wood AT ALL when it comes out of mt Delta,it lifts it into the sanding drum,and causes a dollop across the wood. I do lift it when it comes out of a thickness planer,but the planer has a powerful and heavy steel outfeed roller,which holds the wood down,while I spring it away from the cutters.

Does the Woodmaster have one of those thick,soft rubber conveyor belt feeds? I don't like those. Pressure being released as the wood leaves the infeed roller could be letting the soft rubber push the wood up a bit,causing snipe. Using butted up scrap wood usually helps.

[Bob Wingard]

Does the Woodmaster have one of those thick,soft rubber conveyor belt feeds?

Nah .. the WM uses urethane covered feed rollers on top .. no conveyor as in a widebelt sander.

Gonna try something soon .. I had a couple of sets of stock WM rollers recovered with rubber .. they work OK, but I think the rubber is a bit too soft and might be causing more problems than it solved. I made a set of roller shafts out of stainless steel, and turned down the ends to fit the WM bushings, but left the middle at about 1.3". That gives me the rigidity of the thicker roller shaft, AND the soft, tacky surface of the rubber. I'm gonna try this set out pretty soon, and see if it helps/hurts. I'll let you all know what happens.

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[Brian Coe]

Thanks for all the thoughts and suggestions...Glad to know at least it isn't just me, especially since I haven't had any problem with tuning my other machines old and new to within the tolerances I prefer. I suspect it is simply a problem to live with, due to the machine's design to be multi-functional.

Thanks again for the comments, and any new thoughts still appreciated!

Brian

[Troy Simonton]

Gotta laugh here... Finally someone else having issues with the 725. I've had my 725 since '92. Bought it new with well earned OT money. I've spent a tremendous amount of time tweaking ole Big Brutus over the years and have been able to reduce the snipe to nearly nothing and eliminate the bed flex. I first noticed a problem with flex in the cast iron bed when I was making my first set of kitchen cabinets. I planed the raised panels for the doors and once I routed them with the raised panel bit, I noticed that the sides of the panels were narrower than the middle. Made it very frustrating trying to get nice doors when I had to over-rout the panels to totally fit in the stile and rails. I was seeing 30 mils of variation in the panel thickness in 12" boards. To diagnose this, I borrowed a 24" machinist edge from work and used feeler gauges to check the flatness across the table under the cutterhead. I had 15 mils of 'sag' in 24". That didn't add up, so I then glued up a 24" wide panel and ran it through and cut it to remove the snipe. I had over 50 mils of variation in the panel thickness from end to middle, besides the double snipe on each end. I called and talked with the folks at WM. I believe it was Sonny I spoke with first. He obviously didn't believe me and said that you could park a forklift on the 725 bed. I suggested he try my experiment. He did and later got back with me. They sent out a new cast bed. It had 10 mils of sag. I knew this wasn't the issue. I noticed the casting supports on the bottom of the bed were continous from infeed to outfeed but were offset from side to side. I confirmed that this was what caused the bed flex by running in some scraps, parking them under the feedrollers and using the straight edge again. Side to side I had nearly 50 mils of variation and nearly nothing front to back. My solution was to install a 6"x 1 1/2" heavy duty c-channel to the underside of the bed and use jack screws to flatten and seriously stiffen the bed. This worked great for the flex problem. I can now maintain 5 mils thickness consistency across a 24" panel.

The snipe fix was a trial and error thing. (I have the original black rubber rollers and they have worked well.) I found that I had too much tension on the feed rollers on the side with the drive chain. I removed the springs from a couple of the feed rollers. I'll have to pull the cover to see which ones. I also tweaked the settings on the other tension springs. I haven't had any issues with kickback or problems from my settings.

I bought the sanding head for Brutus back in '98 when I started building instruments. What an awesome addition! I run my instrument sides and tops/backs through on a sled board made from 3/4" mdf. I use a small strip of d/s tape along the front edge to hold the wood to the sled. I can sand down to 90 mils thickness on instrument sides and maintain the thickness within a couple mils in the 5 inch wide boards. I've never had a snipe issue with the sanding head. The sanding feature is a can't live without! Love it!

I've never used the 725 as a moulder although I did buy a few cutters early on for copying some trim. We moved before I needed to make the trim though so the cutters are still in a box somewhere.

I was working on Brutus the other day and finally got him plumbed into my new Grizzly cyclone. I had been running the WM chip collector and 55 gal drum. What a poc. Anyway, I was waxing the bed and managed to slice my hand open on a sharp edge on the angle iron that holds the table jack screws. I grabbed a file and smoothed out the edges. Hate it!

I'd be glad to post some pics of the table support I made if you're interested.

Troy

[James White]

Hi Troy,

Well now that the cat is out of the bag. I will have to admit that I have been holding out on some information regarding my 725. My first bed had .020" sag in the center. I thought this was the cause of the snipe. So with WM excellent customer service (and I mean that) they replaced it. But the new bed has only reduced the snipe and not eliminated it. I did not want to reveal this prior to now since I did not know if mine was the only case. Apparently it is not. I came to the conclusion that the bed was flexing because after getting the bed as close to perfectly parallel to the cutter head. I ran an 8" wide board threw as near as possible to the edge of the bed and found that the board was .010" thicker on the side near the center of the bed. This was the same for the left and right side. So the only way for this to happen was for the bed or the cutter head to be flexing. So I then laid a straight edge diagonally across the bed and found with moderate had pressure I was able to flex the bed down in the center.

I would love to see how you supported the bed. I was thinking of doing the same only had not come up with any viable ideas yet.

When I first got the machine I always wondered how it was possible that WM was able to make this size planer so light compared to other machines this wide. Now I understand that it was a compromise.

James

[Neal Clayton]

sounds like the 725's size exceeds the limits of their design.

i haven't seen any such thing on my 718. it was the first thing i checked out of the box from the factory, and the thickness on a 10 foot board is within two or three thousandths from end to end for me.

snipe on the other hand i have plenty of, about 4-5 inches of deep (more than a 16th) snipe on the tailing end. that i just deal with.

[Bob Wingard]

I have to admit, I was a bit hasty in reading/replying to this post. I have a 718, not a 725 .. I was just lumping all WoodMasters together. I didn't realize that the big brother was different, thus had it's own unique problems.


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[Troy Simonton]

Sorry for the delay. My priorities shifted this weekend. My son and I took advantage of the weather and hit some local farm ponds. The bass bite is on! Meanwhile I have a half-assembled Griz 513 b/s in the shop as well. I'm slipping!

Here's the pics showing my C-channel reinforcement of the WM 725 planer bed. The C-channel is 2" tall with a 6" web. The material is ~1/4" thick. I mounted the channel to the underside with 4 - 1/4"-20 screws. I drilled and tapped the planer bed before I installed this new bed on my planer. The leveling screws were strategically placed under the bed webbing. I used 13 screws to level and support the bed. To make the final bed flatness adjustments, I set the planer up as if I would take a 1/16" pass on a 3/4" board. Then I removed the cutterhead for ease of access. I placed a ~2" wide scrap board under each set of feed rollers to give the bed the maximum flex. I placed my machinist edge across the bed in the area the cutterhead would be and adjusted the leveling screws to raise up the bed in the middle. I set it dead flat. With this c-channel I get no flex in the bed now.

The other pics show the feedroller arrangement. Notice I removed the springs from the two rollers that have the drive pulleys. I determined by using a set of fishing scales that these two points added way too much downward force on the rollers due to the tension of the belt. I measured each end of each feed roller and came up with a lb. tension to shoot for. This was in ~'94 and sorry I don't remember the number. I do recall I used a scrap board under the rollers then measured the force it took to just move the feed roller off the board.

Finally, I added a pic showing the block and tackle lift I came up with to remove the top shroud. Back in my mid-twenties when I bought Brutus, I could manhandle the shroud. Nowadays I'd rather spare my back for hoisting the canoe or swinging the fly rod all day!

Hopes this helps!
Troy

[James White]

Troy,

Thank you very much for sharing. I will be doing this as soon as I find the material.

James