Auxiliary Planer Bed

My FIL gave me his old Delta 22-540 Lunch box planer. I know he had a lot of issues with snipe on it and he couldn't find the original in-feed/out-feed tables, so I was going to try making an auxiliary bed for it out of melamine. Anyone built one like this?



http://www.finewoodworking.com/workshop/article/infeedoutfeed-table-for-a-portable-planer.aspx

When I had mine I did that, but I had the factory infeed/outfeed tables. I'm sure you can build something to replace those, but all I did was get a 5' long piece of melamine that was 12" wide and stick through there. Then on the outfeed side, I jammed shims between the melamine and the table on the far end. It only reduced the snipe, that planer is really bad at it and the only solution I ever found was to catch the board on the outfeed side and pick up on it a little as it finished planing. That planer lasted me almost 10 years and did a lot of work, when I sold it it was still going strong.

Thanks Fred, that's good info on the shims. I think those plans I linked have adjustments on the table, so will play around with that.

Darren i am about to build a sled for my planer to use it as a jointer. Take a look at shop notes issue 137 September 2014. There is a sled there u can use for both purposes with a little adaptation.

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Thanks Rob, that looks like a handy jig, especially for twisted boards.

I picked up a melamine shelf the other day and some 1x4's. Just did a couple of box frames on each side of the planer the height of the planer bed, and then screwed the shelf to both. Need to add a couple of guide rails on each side, but working pretty well. I've been planing down some material for some stair tread overlays, only have snipe on one of them, started lifting that one as it came out and eliminated it.

I don't remember what brand my lunch box planer was (sold 9 years ago) - probably Delta. But I had trouble believing that the outfeed (and perhaps infeed - don't remember) tables were intentionally tipped upward away from the planer. I adjusted with the tip up (quite a bit - probably 1/4 inch at the end of the foot-long flimsy metal outfeed table), and snipe decreased dramatically.

More recently I figured it out... most planers have rollers on both sides of the cutter head. When the board leaves the infeed roller the leverage of the outfeed tends to tip the work up slightly into the cutters - bingo, you have snipe. If you lift the board on outeed (by hand or by a slightly sloped table) it doesn't tip into the cutter, and no snipe.

Yeah, I had planned to shim up the ends of the auxiliary bed if needed, but I think the one board is a bit twisted causing the snipe as none of the others are doing it.

Darren other thing i found that helps tremendously is adding some sacrifical strips either side of the board that are longer than the piece you need.

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