Listen to your tools!!!

Art Mulder

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Location
London, Ontario
Make sure you listen to your tools, because they're probably telling you something important!

Off and on this weekend I've been working on prepping some maple stock for a project. Some of the boards have been pretty wide -- I've been shoving some 10" wide stuff through my planer. (A DeWalt DW735)

Well just a while ago I was doing some final planing on some pieces, and when I stuck another 10" board in, suddenly the tone/sound of the planer changed. It sounded sort of like crackling dry leaves in the lawnmower.

(now, bear in mind that I've got on some ear protection, and the 2hp DC in the corner is going as well as the planer, so the sound description isn't guaranteed -- just accept that it sounded different than it normally does!)

Along with that I suddenly got a lot of shavings blowing back out of the planer. uh-oh, I had visions of finding broken bits of ... something ... inside the planer. I've heard of guys getting their gears jammed, and also of guys where a chunk of wood breaks off an breaks some of the bits off the internal blower fan.

So I STOPPED. (That's one of those hard lessons we try and teach our kids: Don't just force it, stop and figure out what is going wrong!)

But when I popped the cover off of the planer (boy that opens pretty easily), I didn't find any broken bits. What I did find was that the ENTIRE internal DC shroud -- and I mean the ENTIRE thing -- was jammed with planer shavings.

So once I cleared it out I was back in business. But I'm rather puzzled as to how it jammed up like that. I guess that hogging wood off those wide boards was just overwhelming things. Doesn't quite make sense though, as the planer is only about 15' (in terms of DC pipe) from the DC, and even with the DC off, the internal blower has enough juice to inflate the DC bag. With the DC going I've never had any jams like this before.

Oh well, that's my story, and the moral I leave you with is in the subject line: Listen To Your Tools!

Happy Sunday,
...art
 
Then you emptied the dust collector???

Good one!!!! Nope, he is still cleaning and recleaning on his planer, hasn't gotten that far up the line!! :huh::eek::dunno::doh::doh::rofl::rofl::rofl:
My DeWalt on wide boards I wipe the bottom at the end of each board until it blows clear (I have always planed outside on nice days!). Yep, you are right, stopping is generally cheaper than pushing that last one thru, doesn't matter if it is one last round of hay, corn, board, etc. I remember in our Buick station wagon back in the 60's, we were probably 30 miles from home, a wheel bearing started squeaking on the left rear, all of us had to pile on the passenger side, dad drove slow, made it home and tore it apart, no damage to the axle as he had kept it cool enough by keeping the load off of it.
 
DC is only about 2/3 full. Not quite even.

No, it was not a jammed DC system! Oooh, that would have been ugly.

I do missing having clear bags on the bottom. The contractor-grade garbage bags I use are green, so I have to give them a "pat" ever now and then to feel how full they are.
 
art, I was laying in bed the other night around 2 am, and Im almost sure I heard my tablesaw calling out my name telling me it missed me.
I always listen to my tools. I sometimes talk back to them, although the language always isnt acceptable by this boards standards.
 
Art its interesting that you post this cause i had a similar experience with my DW735 planner. I used it to clean up some HD SPF and there were a few knots that got taken out and hooked up in the dust ejector. Had to do the same thing. I also stopped before damage was done. :thumb:
 
A similar experience with my planer EXCEPT when I investigated the rascal was stopped up all the way from the DC, some of the curls had caught on the crosshairs of the guard on the 6" opening of the DC blower and built up clogging the entire length of the 4" hose and into the collector. Geeze, it was packed as tight as a Cigarette...:eek: That mesh has been cut from the DC opening and have few problems now. However Maple sometimes makes curls that tend to want to clogg up in the collector... Was yours Maple?
 
I recently had a similar experience with my 15" planer clogging at the DC outlet. Turned out the problem was at the cyclone. When i checked it, the collection drum was almost empty and I knew it should have had more chips in it. I found the cyclone funnel stopped up all the way to the filter. It was still moving air through that mass but just barely.

I unstopped the clog, removed the filter (made a mess) and took it to a nearby car wash. After thoroughly washing all of the caked sawdust out of the pleats and letting it dry (spun poly so water doesn't hurt it) the DC performed better than it had in ages. I intend to regularly wash out the filter at the car wash from now on.
 
A similar experience with my planer EXCEPT when I investigated the rascal was stopped up all the way from the DC, some of the curls had caught on the crosshairs of the guard on the 6" opening of the DC blower and built up clogging the entire length of the 4" hose and into the collector. Geeze, it was packed as tight as a Cigarette...:eek: That mesh has been cut from the DC opening and have few problems now. However Maple sometimes makes curls that tend to want to clogg up in the collector... Was yours Maple?



I had the same problem. I had to cut out the cross hair thing. Works great now.
 
I listen to them always, specially the non powered ones, they tell me wheter they are sharp and happy to work with me or dull and lazy, if I treat them well they treat me well.
 
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