Ok so my saga with the Shop Fox 15" planer has come to a close and now I am onto fine tuning the setup. By the way I planed some sample boards tonight and this thing is nutso quiet and smooth. My Craftsman planer is like a Boeing 707 coming in for a landing, ear protection is required. My newer Powermatic 60B 8" jointer is ok for running without ear protection until you joint a board and then you need ear protection. Get a load of this and I am not exaggerating, this Shop Fox 15" planer is so quiet when planing a board I seriously will not be bothering to put ear protection on unless I am running a lot of boards, but even for that you probably don't need any. I could only imagine what it would sound like with a spiral blade.

I planed some hickory which had some nasty tear out on my Craftsman planer, and thanks to the slower setting of 16 feet per minute and doing final passes with only a small amount being taken off I got zero tear out and glass smooth wood. (New blade never used)

Ok so onto my question. The owners manual on the Shop Fox states that the bed rollers should be set at .002" for smooth pre-jointed boards, and set it at .020 for rougher stock. So I set it to .002 with the Multi-Gage and the dial caliper attachment. I spent a bunch of time getting it perfect as the manual suggested. Then I took a piece of hickory that I had planed over 6 months ago and erroneously assumed that it was flat and just ran it through. The leading edge got some snipe and I remembered what a fellow SMC member said, "Lower the rollers down out of the way" so I did that, and the snipe got worse. The board didn't like cruising over the chasm where the rollers are and not having any support. So then I decided to set the rollers perfectly flat and even with the bed. That is the last thing I did, and then ran the board through after jointing it, and I got a very near perfect board, but after several passes there still is a little bit of snipe. Not anything that a ROS wouldn't take out.

So I guess my next step is to go back and set it for .002 the way the manual says, and this time start off with a board that is jointed on one side and see how that does. So if anyone has any input on roller settings for absolutely snipe free work, or any other tips on doing that I appreciate the input.