Ski Builders Forum

Bad idea?

I think it would be ok. A lot of dust thought unless you hook up a vac or something.

Ply and mdf are pretty hard on the blades. Your beast should be fine for the short term, but mega fuggin dusty.

Won't be catastrophic. Just will wear your blades out quicker.
MDF has a lot of glue in it. Glue dulls the blades.

Cool, I guess I'll finish dulling the blades in there by running these through. I have one inch wide strips that I want to plane down for the spacers in a new planer crib. I'll hook the shop vac up while running them through.

Yeah that's no big deal. FYI my planer does not cut spacers like that perfectly. snipe front and rear.

MontuckyMadman wrote:Yeah that's no big deal. FYI my planer does not cut spacers like that perfectly. snipe front and rear.

Oh yeah, the snipe on this beast is deadly.

I run my MDF spacers through my planer all the time. I also usually use an old MDF ski template as a test core on a new setup. I don't notice any dulling at all of the blades. The only time I notice a rapid dulling is with bamboo.

As we all know, super dusty. One of these days I am going to get one of these:

Here's some tips to help prevent the sniping:

http://woodworkersjournal.com/forum/arc ... 20503.html

BTW - I just planed some would yesterday using the Railroading method. It works. Also if you're planing I've put separate pieces in side by side. Start one, then insert the next one a few seconds later. I had no idea it was called Railroading or why it prevented sniping until now... I was just trying to get it done faster.

I used my planer to make some mdf spacers as well. As everyone has said, make sure to hook up a dust collection system before going. I didn't notice any dulling of my blades, but probably only ran 30 6" x 6" square through.

MDF cuts like a dream on my planer. I just made the camber section for my new mold this weekend doing this (just like planing a core). It cuts nice and easy and leaves a perfectly smooth/flat surface, but it makes a TON of dust - mine was actually coming off in like strips? Real big mess, but works just fine.

For what its worth... for this new mold I made the TIP molds like normal, cut a bunch of ribs with the router and bolted them together. For the center section I cut just two ribs that were inverse of the camber I wanted, and used those as a crib to run some MDF through the planer. The end result is a perfect camber section that is perfectly flat (assuming the planer blades are flat). Took about 5 minutes, vs an hour or more cutting a bunch of ribs and bolting them together only to find out I suck and nothing is flat. win.

skidesmond wrote:Here's some tips to help prevent the sniping:

http://woodworkersjournal.com/forum/arc ... 20503.html

BTW - I just planed some would yesterday using the Railroading method. It works. Also if you're planing I've put separate pieces in side by side. Start one, then insert the next one a few seconds later. I had no idea it was called Railroading or why it prevented sniping until now... I was just trying to get it done faster.

I planed down some cores today, and managed to get almost zero snipe. I was hand feeding them, and found that keeping them off level, by holding them up quite a bit above the feed table did the trick. If I had a good feed table I would set it significantly highier than the planer table. Was real surprised how much of an effect this had. Previously I was trying to hold them level as they went in and came out of the planer.
Thanks for the link.