Longer in/out feed tables for a planer?

[Tom Jones III]

I got my first set of molding knives for my Jet 13" planer/molder and gave it a try last night. In the manual, it says to cut a 13" x 31" piece of MDF and bolt it to the table, then you clamp/bolt fences to the MDF to keep your work piece sliding exactly under the molding knife the same way every pass. Anyway, one side effect of the MDF is to give you longer infeed and outfeed tables at the expense of 3/4" less vertical clearance. The only negative I can think of is that your height gauge is now 3/4" off. However, one of my biggest complaints about this planer is the short infeed/outfeed tables.

Has anyone put longer feed tables onto their planer? This would seem like an easy way to accomplish it. Possibly I would need to build a small torsion box or use rails to keep it from sagging. Longer tables would solve any instances of snipe and make planing long boards much easier.

[John Miliunas]

The method you describe is what many of have done with smaller, "lunch-box" type planers with pretty good success. I see no reason you couldn't incorporate the idea as a more permanent solution on the Jet!

[Dave Richards]

FWW183 has an article about doing that. The autor removed the OEM wings and used a piece of 1/2" MDF cut to fit in the planer and 60" long. I haven't read the article but I see that he has supports for the auxillary table located 12 to 18" from the center of the planer and another near the ends. He adjusts the ends of the aux table so they are about an 1/8" higher than the center. The author indicates that doing so minimizes snipe.

[Dennis McDonaugh]

I did that with my first planer, a delta 22-240 which I nicknamed the "sniper". Out of the box it put about 3" of snipe on each end of the board. I put a 5' piece of melamie through the planer and it minimized the sniping by providing more infeed/outfeed support. It still sniped, but it was a lot easier to sand out.

[Vaughn McMillan]

I did that with my first planer, a delta 22-240 which I nicknamed the "sniper". Out of the box it put about 3" of snipe on each end of the board. I put a 5' piece of melamie through the planer and it minimized the sniping by providing more infeed/outfeed support. It still sniped, but it was a lot easier to sand out.

I do the same thing with my Delta TP305 "Snipemaster". I've got a piece of melamine/particle board shelving about 5' long, and I clamp it to the infeed and outfeed tables. I let the material being planed slide on the melamine "bed". Still snipes, but not as badly.

- Vaughn

[Roger Bell]

For my Dewalt (older model), I use a one inch thick x 5' long piece of melamine and have attached cleats to the underside that hook to ends of the factory tables. I wax the melamine table regularly and replace it yearly. It has eliminated the modest snipe that I was having to endure.

It comes out easily if I want to conserve floor space.

[David Klug]

You got my curiosty up. I just ran 8 board 12' long through my lunch box 22-450 paner today and I don't have any snipe in the boards. When the boards are coming out I always lift up the on the end of the boards and that seems to do away with the snipe.

DK

[Tom Jones III]

You got my curiosty up. I just ran 8 board 12' long through my lunch box 22-450 paner today and I don't have any snipe in the boards. When the boards are coming out I always lift up the on the end of the boards and that seems to do away with the snipe.

DK

I rarely get snipe as well, but it sure would be nice if I didn't have to run around to lift up the board just right so that I don't get snipe. I often have kids over helping in the shop and catching wood on the outfeed side would be a good job for them. The trouble is, they often don't have the attention span to remember to lift up the wood slightly at the end.

The Jet 13" is really a decent planer but it could be made so much better if the infeed and outfeed rollers were as long as Jet's 15" model.