Thread: Infeed/outfeed taper from thicknesser on thin material

The term for the problem is snipe.
Do a search on thicknesser snipe, It can be due to setup and or procedure and can be hard to eliminate all of it.
Starting with longer lengths and cutting to size is an option if you have access to excess material.

You can adjust the bed rollers on a lot of thicknessers . They get set high for rough sawn stock, and set low for stuff already machined flat on the side that's facing down. When you need to get the best finish possible the bed rollers can be adjusted to be below the table , but the bed needs to be very clean and waxed or oiled . Then when you feed wood through you lift each board a touch on the out feed side as its back end is about to leave contact with the upper feed rollers so the back end is kept touching the bed all the way through. Get the hang of that and there will be no snipe. Do the same when feeding the wood in as well to avoid snipe at the front.

Look at the rollers in this and find out if the machine your using has adjustable bed rollers. There is normally a hand wheel or lever to adjust them .
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You say it's a 24" machine, so is it a 3 phase commercial machine? is there a shed captain that you can ask about snipe? on the more expensive commercial machines snipe is not normally an issue, I have a 24" Sherwood will rubber rollers (so quite a low end machine compared to the sectional feed ones) but it gives a really nice finish with no snipe.

Wow, thanks for the advice all.

I meant to make a comment about snipe, but forgot. Again, being new to this and only having read about it I had not fully appreciated that this was snipe. I think the biggest reason I didnt think this was snipe was because I was expecting it to only be on a small portion of the board ends. 120mm on wither end of a board seemed excessive.

The woodworking club is actually a local club that have use of one of the local high school's woodworking classroom. The tool are fairly old and not the best, but will certainly check the if its 3phase.

When jointed the face of one "full board" 1m long and then proceeded to put in through the thicknesser (for the opposite face) I didn't suffer any snipe issues - another reason I thought it may have been down to the thickness of material rather than the setup of the machine. Having said that, I am not sure who or how much use it had between my goes on it.

I should have also mentioned that I fed some boards in at one angle, and the boards were coming out at a different angle. As if they were slipping maybe?

I joined the Woodworking Club up in Montville (a place near me) and it's a rule of the Club that all new members have to be accredited on each machine before they are allowed to use them, part of the accreditation is learning (apart from safety) how to setup the controls and minimum lengths/thicknessers allowed for each type of machine. There is also a volunteer Shed Captain present (who is accredited for every machine) who is there to assist and make sure the machines are being operated safely.

That's why I mentioned the Shed Captain, is there know one from the School or Club who can offer you advice about what's happening?

When feeding your pieces through the thicknesser try butting each new piece tight up against the end of the piece passing through before it and feed them parallel this may help with snipe.

You also say you can feel visible dips across the board. I wonder what the condition of the blades are. 120mm of snipe sounds like a long length as most modern day machines are about 60mm but you say they are older machines so I don't know if back in those days their design was different. Machines at a lot of clubs are often poorly maintained so your problem starts to point me in the direction of blades.