Well I finally made some sawdust with my new DeWalt 735 planer this afternoon (making a stand for it). After running a few boards through, I noticed that the planer is really sniping quite a bit. Now I don’t have the infeed/outfeed tables for it, as Ill be building them into my stand - but still this seems like a lot of snipe, and its even happening on very short boards where extra support shouldn’t be needed.
To be fair I’ve never owned a planer before, so maybe this is just normal.
My main concern is that there seems to be quite a bit of play in the front-right post of the planer carriage. If you apply a bit of upwards leverage to the carriage, the front-right corner (nearest the height-adjustment wheel) will lift up about 1/16''. None of the other 3 corners seem to be this loose, and do not move an iota if you push up on the carriage near them.
In fact, the height adjustment wheel actually moves when you push up on the carriage. This is easy to see on the snazzy new YouTube video I’ve made of the phenomenon here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyN2r5bhFyU
You’ll also notice that it does this while planing – When the board enters the front roller, the carriage lifts up the 1/16’’ (you can see the hand wheel move), and then when the board passes out from underneath the front roller the carriage falls back down. I thought the DW735 didnt NEED a carriage lock...
Again the movement seems to mainly be at the front right post only… if I put the board all the way to the left, it doesn’t move as much and the sniping is reduced.
Someone tell me this isn’t normal....