Art Mulder
Member
- Messages
- 3,383
- 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
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