Quick Tip: How to Change Planer Blades
George VondriskaDescription
Knife changes aren’t too bad on benchtop planers, except for the eleventy billion bolts you have to take out of each knife. Times two or three to get ALL the knives changed. Wanna learn how to change planer blades faster, and easier?
Eliminate hand work
Most benchtop planers come with some kind of wrench that the manufacturer has provided to get the bolts in and out. This works, but there are so many bolts holding each knife in place. The good news is that you can get any kind of driver you need for your cordless drill, and make this whole thing go a lot faster.
Tool choice
When it comes time to figure out how to change planer blades on your machine, start by looking at the fasteners holding the knives in place. They might be hex head, torx, Allen head, etc. Get the right driver tip for your cordless drill. I don’t mind using an impact driver to take the bolts out, but I don’t drive them back in with an impact driver. Unless it has a clutch. It would be REALLY bad to snap one of those bolts off, and that’s too likely with an impact driver. Use a driver with a clutch, and get the clutch to right setting to drive, but not over drive, the bolts. Easy peezy.
Be safe with that machine
Once you’ve got the knives changed, let’s make sure you’re using the planer safely. Have a look at WWGOA’s planer safety tips to double check the way you’re running your machine.
More woodworking tips
This is just one way to spend more shop time woodworking, and less time being inefficient in your shop. We’ve got a lot more helpful woodworking tips that will help you get the most out of your shop time.
On your planer, it probably came with something like this which is there to help you get the many, many, many, many bolts out that you need to take out in order to replace the knife. So when we look at this particular one, this is a three knife planer. There are a bunch of bolts in each of those chip breakers. They all need to come out in order to get the knives out and they all need to go back in. So it didn't take long for me using this to realize this is no fun. This is so slow. And it's not just on this planer. It's on a lot of other planers that I've worked on. So here's my tip on this is forego the thing that comes with your planer and let's use a little power, power, power. I've got in this driver, impact driver, the same torques that came with it, but we can do this so fast. Now in other planers, they've got hex headed bolts in their different systems for driving them but either way you can always get that kind of a driver. Now, when stuff goes back in this is an impact driver with no clutch, it would be so bad to break one of these off. So when things go back in, I drop the impact and go to a conventional drill driver 'cause then I can use the clutch to control my torque settings. The magnetic tip is very helpful as well. And when I do this going back in, I get one start. And now one of the things you want to be careful about here is the opportunity to cross thread. So I'm taking it easy, making sure it's engaged correctly. I'm not gonna tighten that one completely until I get a second one in. I just wanna make sure that all the holes are lined up on the chip breaker and the cutter head all the way down. Then I'm willing to go further gusto. All right, I'm gonna wrap this up, but you can see this is so much easier and faster when you're dealing with these many bolts to expedite your knife changes.
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it would be nice to be able to hear what is being said I have the volume on the video and my computer turned all the way up but no sound
when putting the screws back in, is there a universal torque setting on the screwdriver or, do you have to experiment depending on your machine? Great video....thanks for the tip...
Good tip. I will do it mostly that way when I change the knives. I have the same planer. I am retired after 45 years as an auto mechanic. I have trained many apprentices in the fine art of mechanical work. I always told them 1) never start screws with power tools, always start them by hand. 2) always start all screws before torqueing any of them down. I will use a magnetic hand screwdriver with the proper torx bit. Good tip! Thanks.