1/64th inch -does it matter

[Dave Malen]

Does your portable planer have any variation in stock thickness from side to side. My Makita 2012 (old model) will plane an eight inch wide board 1/64th thicker on one side than the other.
Dave

[Larry Wyble]

I just bought a delta prtable and it was off 1/16". I adjusted it to the proper
thickness by adjusting the blade carrier. There should be adjustments on each side of the unit. Remove the cover and take a look. Althoough 1/64th inch is pretty small difference. Depends on how criticle you want to get.

[glenn bradley]

I'd have to adjust it. With my luck I'd have that 1/64th off on four different joints and end up off 1/4"

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

0.064" is a lot a IMNSHO

[Dave Malen]

Cliff,
What does that stand for?
Dave

[Larry Wyble]

In My Not So Humble Oppinion

[Bill Wyko]

I concur. 1/64th is still not dead knutz! I do segmented turning and that would be a disaster.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

In My Not So Humble Oppinion

What he said.

[Dave Hale]

0.064" is a lot a IMNSHO

Isn't 1/64" = .015625"?

And isn't 1/64 pretty easily scraped after joining?

I say, if it's easy to adjust, do it. But if the adjustment is taking 2 or 3 knives and 'offsetting' them by 1/64", I'd plan on scraping a little bit after glueup.

[Jim Becker]

IMHO, yes, it matters in this example. Your boards should be exactly the same thickness across the board after you plane them...if both sides are not parallel...joinery will not be fun.

[David Weaver]

1/64th becomes 1/32nd, 1/16th, etc.

It always ends up being on something that supports trim that has a miter on it.

Read the manual and make it as good as it can possibly be. If that's 1/64th, then that's what it is. If it's less, then that's better and you won't get burned sanding and planing stuff, or having to force things together to glue.

[Ralph Barhorst]

If you can't adjust the head you can flip the board over and run it through one more time. The edges should then be the same thickness and the center of the board would be 1/128" thicker.

[John Piwaron]

1/64" is too much. BTW, that's 0.015625"

While not so easily seen in terms of looking at a board's thickness, imagine if you will a mitered corner. You would most definitely see a 1/64" (0.015625") gap. Or a gap in any other joint.

BTW, I once had a planer that did that. I adjusted until I got it to plane to an even thickness all the way across.

[Dave Malen]

I called Makita tech today and was told there are no adjustments possible with this planer except adjusting the extension tables. Which I had already done. I guess its time to buy a new one. or do as Ralph says Just flip the board and put it through twice. Actually I've been doing this. I just am a little anal about my machinery working up to spec. So maybe it's the new makita or a dewalt 735 ( although I'm concerned about the blade issue and noise issue)
Thanks,
Dave

[John Piwaron]

I recall that my Ryobi AP-10 also did not have adjustments for that, though I didn't let that stop me.

I felt that when Ryobi designed the planer, they would have set the cutter unit parallel to the bed and made the rods raise and lower it evenly. They would NOT have set out to make something that couldn't do what was expected of it.

On that planer, I saw that the handle turned a rod with a bevel gear at each end that engaged a bevel gear attached to a threaded rod on either side of the actual cutter unit.

After looking at the number of threads on the rod and the number of teeth on the bevel gears, I determined that if I disengaged the gear pair on one side and rotated the bevel gear on the threaded rod by one tooth to raise (or lower) I got the planer to plane evenly thick across it's width.

This was definitely not a user friendly adjustment.

Maybe after carefully checking your planer over you could do something similar.

This wasn't a change outlined in the units instruction manual, but it certainly worked for me, and might work for you.