Smooth rough lumber, clean up sawn edges and reclaim salvaged boards with a wood planer.
6 Tips for Using a Wood Planer Like a Pro
Updated on Aug. 16, 2024
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Plane perfect deck spindles
Nothing jazzes up a rail quicker than custom-planed spindles. And planing rough-cut 2x2s into crisp, clean spindles is a great way to get familiar with your planer. I usually make 2x2s from wider 2×4 or 2×6 lumber. It allows me to get better-looking spindles with crisp, square edges. Rip the boards to about 1-5/8 in. This will allow you to remove the saw marks and still have about a 1-1/2 in. thickness.
Set the planer to remove about 1/32 in. and run a batch of 2x2s through. Reset the planer to remove another 1/32 in. and run them through with the opposite face up. When the width and thickness are the same dimensions, rotate the spindle a quarter turn and plane adjacent faces. Finally, lower the cutters 1/32 in. and plane the remaining two adjacent faces. Remember to stack the spindles consistently so you can keep track of which sides you’ve planed. It helps to mark one face on the end of each spindle as a reference.
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Avoiding tearout
Tearout happens when you feed a board into the wood planer with the wrong end forward. The knives catch in the rising wood fibers and tear rather than cut them.
In some cases, you’ll be able to tell which end to feed into the planer by inspecting the grain (or to be precise, the direction of the fibers). When you’re planing the wide surface of the board, inspect the grain on the narrow edge. When you’re planing the edges, inspect the wide face. On rough lumber, you can feel the fibers by running your hand over the board. It will be smooth in one direction and rough in the other. Feed the smooth direction forward into the wood planer.
With some boards, you might get tearout in both directions. In this situation, the best approach is to take a small amount of wood off with each pass; 1/32 in. is about right.
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Reclaim old wood
Woodworking planer purists will probably cringe at the thought of using a wood planer to recycle old wood. And it’s true that if you’re not diligent about removing fasteners and dirt from old lumber, you’ll nick the knives or dull them. But I figure the high cost of quality lumber makes it worth it, even if it means replacing a $30 set of blades once in a while.
The board shown in the photo is an old deck joist that was salvaged from the trash. Planing revealed handsome, vertical-grain redwood. The most critical step in reclaiming lumber is to inspect it carefully for screws and nails. In addition, remove dirt and grit from the board with a wire brush.
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Tricks for stopping “snipe”
Snipe is a term used to describe the planer gouge that often occurs at the beginning and end of boards as they enter and leave the planer. Most new woodworking routers have a mechanism for locking the planer heads in place after you adjust the depth. This helps minimize snipe. But the best technique is simply to leave an extra 5 in. of length on your boards.
Cut off the snipe when you cut the boards to their final length. Another trick is to feed in a sacrificial board first. Then feed the next board in against the end of the first board and continue feeding boards end to end. Finally, feed in another sacrificial board. The planer will treat it as one long board and only snipe the first and last boards.
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Clean up board edges
Stacking several boards side by side allows you to remove saw marks from the edges of ripped boards. This technique prevents them from tipping sideways. Another advantage of this method is that you can easily produce a pile of boards exactly the same width. Use this method to plane shelf nosing, face frame parts or the edges of any ripped lumber.
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Sand out ridges
No matter how careful you are, you’ll eventually put a tiny chip in your planer knives. You’ll know by the telltale ridge left in your planed board. Short of buying a new set of knives, there are a few things you can do. On some planers, it’s possible to shift one of the knives slightly to offset the nicks.
It doesn’t take much offset to cure the problem. If this isn’t possible, don’t sweat it. It only takes a few seconds to sand out most ridges. In fact, most boards will require light sanding before finishing.
