planer blade question

allen levine

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new york city burbs
I was noticing a little ridge in my maple today off the planer, so I decided to flip the blades over on the DW735.
(dewalt-kudos to you for making a task that is foreign to newcomers so ridiculously simple a challenged person like me did it all in under 15 minutes, just that you should have extended the pins a bit more into the blade plate)
I wanted to order a new set, since I do alot of wood, and I dont quite understand why they are called disposable 13 inch blades.
As opposed to what, keeping blades and resharpening them, cause once they are nicked, how well can they be sharpened?

Are all or any of the blades Im about to order going to be listed as disposable?
 
i could be wrong but i think the rigid and others like it have a grove that acts like a key to set the hight. if so you can toss them. the ones you resharpen have a jig that sets the knives at a predetermined distance and you use a threaded pin to hold them there while you tighten them.
 
Allen

I am not familuar with your planer by Model but if you have any room to move the blades left to right, often time only one blade will have the defect and you can move that blade over one way or the other and be nearly as good as new. In fact sometimes even if both or all three blades have a nick they can be off set so the nick doesn't leave a ridge.

Garry
 
Some, not all blades in them noise maskers(lunch box models) are not worth sharpening.This one of the draw backs of them. When yopu go to get new ones, it my be worth it to get a extra set in case you hit something that is not supposed to be there.
 
The experience I've had with my old 733 is it dosen't take much to put a small nick in the blades. Most of the time what the machine leaves can and will sand out very easily. I usually sand my boards after planing anyway so the little ridge is not problem. If you change your blades every time you get a nick, you're going to have a heck of a blade bill by the end of the year.
 
it wasnt just little nick here and there, it was a straight line right down the length of the board, first time it happenned. The blade was nicked, maybe it hit a knot on the maple,(birch) and that was it.
 
it wasnt just little nick here and there, it was a straight line right down the length of the board, first time it happenned. The blade was nicked, maybe it hit a knot on the maple,(birch) and that was it.

That's what I'm talking about Allen. You're always going to get nick from knots or unseen staples in the wood. Yes, you'll get those "lines" down the board, but they do sand out very easily. I'd rather sand the line out rather than replacing blades. Like I said before, I sand them after planing anyway as there is always some machine marks that need to be removed. :thumb: Another thing you can do is get a cabinet scraper. Just pull it down the board once and the line is gone.
 
royal has it right allen a scraper is a good way to elimnate the lines then sand after wards..and besides a scraper is your freind in more areas than just ridges on a planed board..:) yup ya need to get another tool:)
 
I second the scraper recommendation. A card scraper can't run you more than $10 - a burnishing rod not much more than that. The card scraper will take care of any ridges without fouling the grain like sanding does. Sanding does obscure some of the character of the grain or color because the pores are filled with wood dust. But that's a whole other discussion
About your planer - i've got the old school system where the blades are 1/4" thick. I remove them, sharpen them, and reset them in the cutter head, tuning the blade depth with adjustment screws. It takes 20 or 30 minutes to replace the blades. I used to have them sharpened, but they'd come back with a ridiculous amount ground off of them and no honing of any sort. I bought one of those Makita wet grinders and couldn't be much happier about how it all works.
The disposable blade systems look like they work ok, but seem a bit wasteful and expensive for my taste - this is my hobby, so i'm not charging material costs to jobs, and the extra bit of time doesn't cost me anything.
When you get a nick like that, it's in all of the blades in the same spot. If it were only in one, the other blade would smooth it out. All you need to do, if you can, is to loosen one of the blades and slide it sideways, just a small fraction of an inch will do. Tighten things back up, and you should be good to go.
That model is a nice machine. Have fun with it.
paulh
 
maybe I should have only flipped 2 blades, so if they get it in same spot, one will still plane out the others nick.
I ordered new blades, 53 bucks.
Paul, the blades dont seem to be able to be moved at all, they sit on exactly fitted pins, I guess made for people like me so I dont put them in incorrectly.
Ive run a ton of wood through that little machine, Im not complaining.
 
allen, i will double check on dad's 735 tomorrow, but i am pretty certain the blades can move side to side about 1/16 or so, but are firmly positioned in the opposite direction because that is what controls the height adjustment.

i have been wrong before though and this might be one of those times, i meant to check today and forgot.

those blades can be bought at lowes and most HD's right around the same price just don't have to order them.

happy planing

chris
 
$53 a shot??? Man, i'm waaaaaayyyy too cheap for that. It does take a bit of time for me to sharpen my spare set when i switch out the blades on my jointer/planer, but it keeps me in good with my better half - the single most thrifty person i've ever come across. I've creatively scrounged together a decent shop over the years, but that's another discussion entirely.
paulh
 
$53 for a set of blades is not bad. I ran a board thru my big planer this after noon and found a bullet inside the board.:eek: So much for that set of blades.
 
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