A wood planer is a hardworking tool in the woodshop, but if the wood isn’t handled correctly when it enters and exits the machine, you can get “snipe” or a deeper cut on the ends. Eliminate that for good!
No matter what type of wood thickness planer you have, snipe can occur. It doesn’t matter if you have a hobbyist model, mid-range, or professional machine, you can still end up with “snipe”, where a significant amount of the end of the board can be planed thinner than the target thickness. If the board isn’t cut oversized in the early stages of milling, the board may end up not being able to be used for what you planned. Not good.
What causes snipe, anyway? A planer works by pressing a flat side of the board against the “bed” of the planer, using a roller in front and behind the rotating knife head. So, as you feed a board into the machine, the board will lay on top of the bed, then advance under the first roller, encounter the planer knives, then the next roller. As the board exits the machine, the trailing end will come out from under the first roller but is still being thicknessed by the cutter knives. The board then passes beyond the knives but is still held down to the bed by the remaining roller. The board then exits.
As long as the board is in contact with the front roller, the rotating knife head, and the back roller, no snipe will occur because the board is held fast against the bed on the bottom side of the board. But when the board is entering or exiting the planer, there is a risk of snipe.
So, what to do?
First, always hold the boards up slightly both when the stock enters and exits the machine. This stops the end of the board from pivoting up under a single roller and having the blade take off unintended stock. It doesn’t take much to do this and you’ll quickly develop a feel for it.
Or, if you are milling medium-weight and moderately-thick stock, see if you can adjust the feed and exit tables for your machine. Our DeWalt® DW735 has adjustable tables that allow the furthest edges from the machine to be tilted up slightly. If the stock isn’t too thick, the feed rollers will bow the stock slightly, keeping it tight against the bed, and eliminating snipe.
Lastly, if you have several pieces of stock that all need to be planed to the same thickness, feed them end to end in one continuous flow. That way, the infeed and outfeed rollers only have to adjust once in the run, and no end of any single piece will be tipped up into the path of the cutter.
If all this fails, you could simply use oversize stock that has extra length that you can cut off to take care of the areas that have snipe on them. It works, but it wastes stock. It may be worth the trade-off to get the consistent thickness of the stock you need.
While you’re at it, be sure to keep the bed of the planer waxed to reduce slide resistance and allow the feed rollers to do their job without slippage.
Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com.
Having a thickness planer in the makerspace
is a really cool thing,
but there is an irritating thing that can happen
from time to time, and that's called snipe.
And that is where on the end of a board,
where it first enters into a thickness planer or comes out,
there's an area that's cut deeper,
and this is called snipe.
Well, once you understand what's happening,
there's at least three ways,
maybe in a fourth I'll throw in here,
that you can eliminate this little problem,
what's happening here.
Let's get to it.
All right, before I tell you the solution,
let's explain to you the problem.
And once you understand the problem,
you'll develop a few habits that address the problem.
Well, here's what happens.
When you feed a board into a thickness planer,
and of course, this is set up high,
but let's suppose it was set down to cut
approximately a 5 1⁄8 inch thick board.
When this enters in,
the first thing that's going to encounter
is the end feed roller.
And you can see it here where I'm showing you the roller
that is right in front of the rotating head
where the planer knives are.
Then the board encounters the planer knives,
and then on the other side of the blades,
you have the outfeed roller.
When you take a look down in the top of the machine,
you can see where the rotating cutter head is,
and right in front of it along this area
is where the end feed roller is.
Right behind the rotating planer head knives
are the exit roller or the outfeed roller.
These three things work in conjunction
to keep the stock flat on the bed here, okay?
So once you understand that you want stock coming in
flat on the bed and not up like that,
then you're halfway there.
So here's what happens.
Sometimes the bed or the end feed tables
are maladjusted to the end feed roller
or to the rotary head.
So practice number one that you can always do
when you're putting wood into the end feed side
is lift this tail just a little bit
to assure that that is flat right at the tip
until it encounters the roller,
which then is going to push it down flat
and feed it through, all right?
If you don't lift or you do the opposite
and you lift it like this,
then what's gonna happen, this area is too high,
it gets hit, sniped off the end,
and you get this effect right here
where a section of it is cut away
because it was raised up before it got pushed down
to the bed and then fed through the remainder of the way.
So practice number one, always raise the tail
and on the outfeed side, lift the lead edge
or the lead end as it comes towards you just slightly
so as the board exit, it's being kept down flat to the bed.
That's practice number one.
Number two, on planers that have these auxiliary
or installed factory infeed and outfeed tables,
another trick is to raise the leading edge of this
and the trailing edge on the back table over here
just slightly, and thereby, what you're automatically doing
is doing what we just showed you manually.
You're raising the end, making sure that the lead edge
as it enters the machine and rides along the planer's bed
is flat against the bed, giving the planer time
to put the infeed roller down, push it down,
keep the stock flat against the bed
and to deliver a consistent cut.
Now as you can see here, I'm just gonna take
a straight edge here and place it right on my infeed
and outfield tables and you can see right under here,
there is a slight gap, meaning you can see
that it's raised on each end right there.
Now I can deflect it down and push it down,
but these are raised just a little bit to assist
in giving that pristine, beautiful, consistent cut.
Practice number three.
Have your stock staged in such a way
that as you're feeding one piece in
and as it goes into the machine,
you're able to butt another piece right with it.
That way, it's all planed at the same time
and there's no start and stop.
The rollers just roll onto the next stock
and keep everything flat and thereby,
the last piece, when you come out, lift the last piece,
you'll have everything ready to go.
It is a great way to eliminate snipe.
Now, there's one last thing I'm gonna point out.
If you try all of these and you have a planer
that's just downright ornery and you can't stop
the snipe from occurring,
then here's what I'm gonna suggest you do.
When you're doing your rough cut for your stock,
leave it like four inches long and that way,
if there is any snipe at the end
of your rough process pieces,
before you go to the next step of final dimensioning,
you can go ahead and just cut off those sections
that have been planed down too much through snipe
and end up with a board that's consistent in thickness
all the way along its length.
All right, we demonstrated everything we've shown you
on this beautiful little DeWalt DW735.
If you'd like to take a more in-depth view
of the features on this machine,
we really enjoy the machine,
but take a look at this video where we show you
step-by-step different controls here and features
and you can make a decision if it's great for you.
And while you're at it,
check out this other video over here
from our catalog that YouTube and we think
is perfect for you.
Until the next time, this is Dirt Farmer Jay
from DirtFarmerJay.com, living the snipeless life.
