Why is my planer chipping-out all of a sudden?

[Keith Hanlan]

I've been milling a lot of cherry and walnut lately and this morning decided that it was finally time to change the blades. I have a Ridgid

13" TP1300 and so the operation is a piece of cake. I verified that the blades were parallel and some initial passes with scrap cherry worked perfectly. However, when I went to plane down a long 5" board it started to chipout. I've never even seen chipout before with this tool and my immediate concern was that I somehow screwed up the blade replacement.

I opened it back up again and checked everything - it all looks fine. This board isn't particulary different from any of the others and yet the chipout is much worse that one would expect with even birdseye maple.

So, what do these symptoms suggest? Any ideas? Thanks for your help.

Keith Hanlan Ottawa, Canada

[Steve Peterson]

Are you sure the new blades are sharp?

Steve

[David]

symtoms suggest it's the particular board. I surface plane mostly red oak and rarely have a problem. However, ONE ornery piece refused to plane without severe chipout. I finally scrapped the piece and moved on.

Backbeveling the blades might help a bit, if you are so inclined. Have you tried wetting the board?

dave

[Duane Bozarth]

...

That you're running the piece through the grain...turn it end for end and I bet it will be much better now... :)

[Leon]

Probably the correct answer. Look at the edge of the board as you would before running it through a jointer and feed the board with the grain. I suspect this particular lumber has an exaggerated grain direction when viewed from the edge of the board.

[Keith Hanlan]

Probably the correct answer.

I had tried reversing the direction and it made no difference.

But no matter - I *think* I've found and fixed the problem: congested sawdust. I took the dust collector attachment off while it was still running and a great clumb of sawdust shook lose.

[If you're familiar with the TP1300, the collector has a 4" and a 2 1/2" output port at opposite sides. I use the smaller end and the other end is plugged. This plug seems to be a bit of a aerodynamic low pressure spot where dust can pile up. Thinking back, I recall that the chipout was much worse when I ran the 4" board through that side of the planer rather than the other side. I think now that perhaps I should fill in the interior cavity of the plug itself with something solid.]

Afterwards, I re-tested on a short piece and the problem seemed to be clear. And then I tried the troublesome long-piece again and it was okay. Unfortunately, it was already at the full 3/4" thickness that I desired so I will have to wait until tomorrow to try more. This one particular piece of cherry isn't going to be visible so I'm in luck.

Hopefully when I finish milling the stock for the upper piece, I won't have any more problems.

Thanks for your help everybody.

[Keith Hanlan]

Leon agreed:

I had tried reversing the direction and it made no difference.

But no matter - I *think* I've found and fixed the problem: congested sawdust. I took the dust collector attachment off while it was still running and a great clumb of sawdust shook lose.

[If you're familiar with the TP1300, the collector has a 4" and a 2 1/2" output port at opposite sides. I use the smaller end and the other end is plugged. This plug seems to be a bit of a aerodynamic low pressure spot where dust can pile up. Thinking back, I recall that the chipout was much worse when I ran the 4" board through that side of the planer rather than the other side. I think now that perhaps I should fill in the interior cavity of the plug itself with something solid.]

Afterwards, I re-tested on a short piece and the problem seemed to be clear. And then I tried the troublesome long-piece again and it was okay. Unfortunately, it was already at the full 3/4" thickness that I desired so I will have to wait until tomorrow to try more. This one particular piece of cherry isn't going to be visible so I'm in luck.

Hopefully when I finish milling the stock for the upper piece, I won't have any more problems.

Thanks for your help everybody.

[SonomaProducts.com]

Excellent. Thanks for telling us about the resolution. I was scratching my haed a bit on this one and the ol' chip breaker problem never crossed my mind. Yes, having shavings reenetr the cutting area is a major problem to avoid. The "chip breakers" seen in larger planer are just for this purpose to move the chips away from the blade and into the dust collection before the blade heads back doem for a cut.

[Duane Bozarth]

I'm puzzled as to why that would manifest itself as "chipout"--but I freely admit I don't have and have never used any of the smaller planers--I have only "old massive iron". W/ it, if it gets bogged down w/ chips, they simply get beat into the surface of the material, but it doesn't cause additional chipout of the cut surface...