Planer cutting a taper

[Ted Beyer]

I have a delta rockwell 13" planer that is cutting a taper on board face. I have reset knifes, check bed rollers and will check cutter head for
parallel to bed. Any suggestions on cause, what else to check and possible fixes? Thanks Ted

[Philip Rodriquez]

Can you post the model number? Delta has about a 1000 planers and the specific one may provide some insight. Does your model have bed-rollers?

If not, check the settings again (start with the blades). The taper didn't cut itself .

[scott vroom]

Is the "taper" at the leading and/or trailing edges of the board?

[Prashun Patel]

Are you sure the bottom of the board's flat? If it's bowed slightly and tightly, the rollers may not be able to press it flat, which will cause a taper.

[Frank Drew]

Is the "taper" at the leading and/or trailing edges of the board?

I might be wrong, I think he meant that the taper was side to side on the board (measured at the edges, one side is thicker than the other side), but it's an interesting question and Ted can clarify just what he meant.

The knives need to be installed accurately in the cutterhead, and then you need to verify that the planer bed is equidistant to the knives themselves (not the cutterhead) all across their length.

Years ago a friend of mine had a Powermatic planer with bed leveling screws that had different pitches to their threading; he could adjust everything precisely, but as soon as he raised or lowered the bed it came out of parallel with the knives, and it took him the longest time to figure out the problem.

[Roger Jensen]

I'd guess it is the infeed and/or outfeed tables. I had the DeWalt and the proper setting was to have the ends of the tables about 1/16 (thickness of a nickle) higher than the planer bed. Not intuitive to me. I always tried to make everything exactly level.

Good luck.

[John Coloccia]

Often times it's just technique. If the board rocks side to side, you'll probably get a taper. If you put pressure on the board unevenly, you can get a taper. Obviously the machine has to be setup properly as well, but a lot of my tapering problems on rough boards were just because there was no "good" side to pass the board through on. Both sides often have problems.

Now I use a jack plane to get the board to the point that it doesn't wobble, and then I pass it through. It only takes a couple of minutes with the jack plane as I'm not looking to make it flat. I'm just looking to knock down the high spots in the middle of the board.

All that said, something can be out of alignment on the jointer too. I just went through this with my jointer and eventually found a pretty bad warp on the outfeed table. Jet took good care of me and sent out a NEW jointer (I'm waiting for the delivery truck as I type, in fact). The warp made it absolutely impossible to get the beds coplaner with each other and the cutter head...something was always off and it drove me absolutely nuts trying to figure out why. Mine was warped about .015", which is pretty excessive, and no matter what I did I always ended up with a combination of snipe on edge jointing, or taper on face jointing.

[Ted Beyer]

Thanks for input so far, to answer a few question planer is a model 13 inch Rockwell planer model 22-650, mid 1980s I am guessing. Taper is edge to edge. I dont think Taper is coming from stock to begin with, I face joint stock prior to feed thru. Problem recently started to be come evident. So I think something has shifted. I now have dial indicator and stand so I will be able to check side to side measurements for ciutter head, knifes, bed rollers ect. This should show what the problem is I hope. any other suggestions are welocme.

[Tom Veatch]

I was having the same problem with my 13" Jet. I found the head wasn't dead parallel with the table (or vice versa, however you want to look at it). Not familiar with the layout of yours, but the table on mine is raised/lowered by a couple of chain drive jack screws. Shifted the chain a couple of teeth on one of the screw sprockets and now she's working like it ought to.

If you have to adjust the level of either bed or head, I'd recommend you do it without knives installed. You want the head parallel to the bed independently of the knives. Otherwise the knives have to be installed on a slope relative to the head. That's much more difficult to do than setting the knives parallel to the head.

[Philip Rodriquez]

Ted, you are on the right track. IMHO, good set-up tools are essential to diagnosing problems.

Myself, I have one of these:
http://www.oneway.ca/workshop/multi-gauge.htm

[John Coloccia]

The oneway is a miracle worker with jointers. Huzzah!

(can you tell I like my Oneway )

[Kent A Bathurst]

Ted, you are on the right track. IMHO, good set-up tools are essential to diagnosing problems.

Myself, I have one of these:
http://www.oneway.ca/workshop/multi-gauge.htm

Ditto on the oneway. It is one of those things that I don't use often, but there is no substitute. You're not gapping sparkplugs on the '72 Olds, so the feeler gauges never worked well for me. I got the oneway and a 48" Starrett straightedge some years back, and all problems with my planer, table saw, and jointer operations were gone.

[Peter Quinn]

You don't need a dial indicator, you don't need any fancy tools at all. All you need is a shop made wooden gauge block and a cheap set of feeler gauges. The gauge block is an arbitrary but Static reference against which you can gauge almost all other machine settings from the bed up. Takes less than two minutes to make with a chop box and virtually any 8/4 scrap of wood will do. I would use it to verify all settings, including chip breaker height, feed roller heights, and head parallelism as long as you're going through it. Knives should be set with a knife setting gauge that references off the head, and bed rollers are set with a straight edge, though a jointer set up jig with dial indicator can help there.

Can you pull the manual from Service Net? That will give you set up specs. Don't know if they still support Rockwell products? Does the head move like the Delta Dc-380 series planers? My impression is Rockwell/Delta has always been a "moving head" setup on the smaller iron floor models .If you can't get a manual for your machine and it is a moving head set up, you can download the instructions from Delta/PC/Dewalt service net in PDF format for the DC-380, and this may point you in the right direction as they share similar lineage. I have my issues with Delta but their manuals are great.

In any event, you NEVER NEVER NEVER set the head parallel to the bed via the knives. This is bad practice, dangerous, and introduces problems that will be hard to isolate and chase out. You set the "head casting" parallel to the bed using a gauge block and feeler gauges, measuring at each of the four corners of the head casting near the posts. I had to go through this with my used DC-380, it was some of the least fun I have ever had, but I only had to do it once so far. It is done by adjusting the sprockets on each corner after loosening the chain drive, which is no joy given the space you have to work in. Your machine may have reached that age where this adjustment has become necessary. Luckily IME once tuned it should continue to perform well, and its easy to verify if head parallelism is in fact the problem before you go on to actually correcting it.