10b tuning up your thickness planer

There are three things you need to do to keep your thickness planer running well

And I want to show you each of them right now. The first thing you need to do, and it applies to all thickness planers on the market

is to regularly wax the bed. If you don't do this, your wood is going to stick and it won't feed through properly

Now as for wax, this is what I use, Johnson's Paste Wax

I bought it in the late 70s, and as you can see inside

there's still plenty of wax in there. I figure I got maybe 5, 10 more years out of this can

Just put a little bit on the rag and run it in circles around the bed

You don't have to be fancy, just as long as you get complete coverage

Let it dry for a few minutes and then lightly buff it off with a clean rag

It's amazing how long that's going to allow your wood to keep sliding smoothly while you plane it

The next two tune-up operations happen inside the planer. Now how you get it to your machine might vary from what you're going to see here

but the basics are the same. You're going to have to take the top off to gain access to the cutter head inside

With the machine unplugged and the cutter head exposed, you can get to work changing the blades

which is the second maintenance operation you need to do on your planer

You know that the blades need to be changed when the planed wood comes out

with little raised bumps along the length of the wood. That means that there's a nick somewhere in the blade

and it's causing that berm of wood to be left behind. A few of them is okay, you can sand them out

but when they start to get large and numerous, then it's time to get to work inside the machine

The knives on all planers are held by a whole bunch of bolts, like you see here

Regardless of the machine you have. What you need to do is to start loosening off all the bolts and then remove them

Now before you do that though, I want to show you a little trick

The bolt holes in most blades aren't round, they're actually oval, like you see here

That allows you to slide one blade or the other from side to side slightly

The advantage is if you've got just a little bit of ridging on your planed boards

and you want to get that planing really well for an important project

but you don't want to change blades, you just loosen off the blade anchoring screws

slide one blade a little bit to one side, and then the nicks in the blades that caused the groove in the first place don't line up

and you get perfectly smooth results, at least for a little while

If you really do have to change your blades, you're going to find the job very easy

Today's blades are double-sided, they're sharp on both edges, and they're disposable

Also, each blade has holes for registration pins. These are small round protrusions of metal that come out of the cutter head

and lock the blade in just the right position, so you don't have to worry about getting the height right

When the blade's in place, you put your metal cap strip on top

tighten all of the bolts down, go back and forth several times to make sure you've got them all tight

and then you're good to go. Now, when you're changing the blades and you've got the cutter head exposed

there's one more thing you need to do. This is the third bit of maintenance

and that's applying paste wax to the inside surface of the shroud that surrounds the cutter head

This greatly reduces the buildup of pitch that would roughen that surface

and cause your planer to jam up during heavy planing. Take care of these three issues

and you'll have smooth wood every time you walk over to your planer and turn it on