Setting the Thickness & Depth of Cut on a Thickness Planer

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Jon on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this video clip I’ll be talking about setting the thickness and depth of cut. To set the thickness of your planer, you’re going to want to use the depth adjustment knob; and what we’re going to do is go ahead and take our stock, and we’re going to go ahead and push it through the planer. Now mine will not go through the planer right now. So what I’m going to do is raise my blades and just push until it slides freely. Then what I’m going to do is slowly bring it down, while still moving it, until the board sticks, right there. So then I’m going to back it off a little bit and pull my board out. This is the point where I’m going to start. When I start to make my cut, I’m going to start at this setting, and then I’m going to go ahead and make my cut. When talking about depth of cut, you really don’t want to take more than probably a 32nd of an inch off. Now on my handle it tells me how much each turn is; on my material guide, it’ll show me how much I’m taking off. So when you run your board through, when it comes out the other side, you’re going to want to bring it back here. And I typically tell people to start about a quarter of a turn and then run it through again, bring it back, go another quarter of a turn. "