Used 12" Delta Planer

[Vaughn McMillan]

Lopaka, to answer your question for Sam, yes, the feed rollers are on top. The 4' x 12" melamine shelf from the BORG has helped me get my best results with my TP305 Snipemaster. As others have mentioned, there are ways around the snipe.

- Vaughn

[Jim Becker]

I have another question about using a thickness planer. From what I read, the steps to thicknessing a board are as follows 1) Joint one face 2) Rip an edge 3) Plane opposite face. Is that correct? Well my problem is, I don't have a jointer and I'm not good enough to hand plane a board to thickness.

There are a number of ways you can get a board flat before thicknessing ranging from hand planes to using a sled and your soon-to-be-new planer.

[Sam Chambers]

Thanks for those tips Sam. Let me get this straight. You put the entire board "through" the planer? If I'm picturing it right, that sounds like a good way to have a perfectly even infeed and outfeed table. Where are the rollers that pull the wood through the planer? Are they on top? Otherwise I can't see how the wood will get pulled through. It might be worth the trouble to make one of those work stations dedicated just for the planer.

Lopaka, check out that link in my earlier message. It shows it quite clearly - a picture is worth a thousand words, right? Basically, the melamine acts as the bed of the planer. The feed rollers and the cutter head are on top. It's important to remember that you have to put that wooden cleat underneath (also shown at the woodshopdemos link), and you have to support the ends of the melamine, or it'll defeat the whole purpose.

Good luck, and happy planing!

[Chet Parks]

I've been using a 22-540 for about a decade. It's a sturdy little machine and has done everything I've asked of it. Snipe is about 2.5" at each end - not bad if you're working with 8' boards, but it starts to add up if you have lots of shorter pieces to plane. Butting boards end-to-end and using "cheater" pieces, like Stu suggests, eliminates the problem.

I got a used 22-540 last year and was bothered by the snipe problem also. I built this planer table and after some playing, totally solved the snipe problem.



The top of the table is 3/4"MDF which has been waxed to a high gloss with Butcher's bowling alley wax. If you look real hard at the infeed side of the planer table, you will see a thin blue line between the rails and the MDF. This is blue masking tape. I first put down a full lenth piece from the planer to the far left of the rails, then starting at the far left of the infeed, a one 1" short piece of tape, etc. Continued with progressively shorter pices of tape-on both rails - until the far left of the infeed table was built up about .006" with the tape down to 0 buildup at the cutter head. Don't forget to put the full number of layers of tape across the far end of the rails so the whole left end of the infeed is elevated the same and supported.

It took several trys to find the right thickness of tape, but this totally eliminated the snipe problem with this planer. With the wax finish on the MDF, the boards go through like they were on rollers. BTW, I downloaded the planer table plans from the Fine Woodworking site.

Chet Parks

[Harry Niemann]

On the sawmill home page do a search for Delta 22-560 planer and read the results from Harry Niemann

[Lopaka Garcia]

Gee Sam, shows how much I was paying atttention. I didn't even see that link on your response. Yeah now I see what you're talking about. Yes pictures do speak a thousand words. I learned a lot from this thread and I'll take them to heart. Thanks so much to everybody for your help.

[Jim Becker]

On the sawmill home page do a search for Delta 22-560 planer and read the results from Harry Niemann

He's looking at a 22-540 which is an earlier design without the four post locking system...hence the snip mitigation discussion. The 22-560 (which I owned prior to buying the Mini Max J/P combo) was not prone to snipe in my experience at all.

[Julio Navarro]

Chet, your table is an excellent idea, I have the same planner and was sorely disappointed by the snipe, but now thanks to this thread I see new light for my poor $199 delta disappointment..

I love this place!

Stu, your idea about the cheater boards is great too, I'll have to try that till I build that planner table.

[Dev Emch]

Hey Lopaka...
If you want a measurement to compare to, go visit HESS WOODWORKING. I forget which island Chuck is on but he has quite a collection of serious old iron restored and its quite a woodworking shop!

[Lopaka Garcia]

Wow that's some serious woodworking machinery he has. Unfortunately he lives on Maui and I live on Oahu. I sure wouldn't mind being his friend . One of his tools are probably worth more than my entire shop.