How do you get repeatable planer results?

I would just run it all together then all of it will be the same. start with the thickest piece and run all of your wood if it’s close reset your planner and run it all again repeat until you get to what ever thickness you want. If you want to be able
to set each piece to do it one at a time later they woodcraft and other places sell Wixley digital height gauges that connect to you planner for around $65.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

<edit> what Jim said </edit>

What I do is joint all the stock I’m going to need and plane it close to final thickness. I adjust the planer to final thickness, running test cuts if the thickenss is critical, and run all the stock. For even modest sized projects I spend more time running stock through the planer than setting the planer for a particular thickness.

Often the exact thickness isn’t important, only that everything comes out the same thickness.

Some recommend stickering the stock and letting it sit overnight (maybe even a week) after machining it to rough thickness and size, and then come back and do the final jointing, planing, and other machining.

-- Greg D. -- the price of freedom is tolerance

Yep, I’m with Jim. When I need all the boards to be the same thickness I run them all through at the same time so that the last cut is the same on all. Do the same on my drum sander. I don’t rely on stops except on my routers.

And Greg made a good point too. Once you start milling wood you’re relieving stresses in the wood and it can move.

-- -Curt, Milwaukee, WI

Measure how much the planer takes off with each crank down. My Dewalt takes a 32nd off each time. You could make an index strip pretty easily.

-- Barbara

What Jim said would be the easiest and most accurate.

-- Alaskan's for Global warming!

Yep. I think what Jim said is the smartest thing. I might look into the Wixley gauge though. Seems like a good idea.

Thanks,
Rut

I noticed MLCS has a digital height gauge for planners for $49.95 and they have free shipping.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

I’ve got the Wixey one for the planer and for the router table haven’t installed either yet. But also do have the Wixey one for the Unisaw installed and that thing is dead accurate. So no doubt in my mind the other two will be too.

-- -Curt, Milwaukee, WI

What I do is joint all the stock I’m going to need and plane it close to final thickness. I adjust the planer to final thickness, running test cuts if the thickenss is critical, and run all the stock.

+ 1

and if you do it this way, and have all your stock piled up in the correct orientation at the infeed, and are willing to run back and forth from outfeed to infeed, you can chase one board butted up right behing the other and eliminate most of the snipe.

I’m have a very similar planer…

... and I never even look at the scale…. Rather, I know that one turn on the height crank is 1/16” and I do half and quarter turns to dial in from my measuremnt.

If you’re within .02” and all the boards went through the same set up… I think you’re as good as these tools were meant to be.

-- Matt, Pine is fine, but Oak's no joke!

I do it exactly as a1jim said and it works for me.

-- " I'll try to be nicer, if you'll try to be smarter" gfadvm