Changing Planer Blades

intjonmiller

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I scored an amazing deal on a planer about 18 months ago. $50 for a Delta TP300 lunchbox planer. It still had the protective film on the infeed and outfeed tables, with barely a scratch on them, and no apparent damage to the blades. It fits in my shop and it runs great.

Unfortunately I ran some scraps through it from a shop where I used to work, where they are too dumb to buy lumber from an actual lumber supplier, instead opting for Home Depot. Just throwing money away. (I get that HD is often the best choice for home projects. These guys were going through A LOT of lumber making custom doors for people with more money than sense.) And Home Depot uses staples to attach UPCs to some types of lumber, including 1x4 T&G pine. And I missed two staples when checking them before planing. One hit vertically, so there's a small but deep nick that I could mostly eliminate by offsetting the blades. But the other hit horizontally, leaving a less deep but wider nick that I'm not sure I can offset.

It turns out these are not the non-sharpenable planer blades with the registration pins that are common on the newer models. These are solid and get clamped just like my jointer blades. The blades are reversible, but the planer did not come with the blade setting jig/tool that was originally included. And the access is too tight to get a dial indicator in there to set them the way I do with my jointer, at least without disassembling the whole planer just to change the blades.

There is one video on this subject, featuring this model planer, on YouTube. That guy says he used the depth end of his calipers to set them "about that high". But with the blades still clamped tightly I had trouble getting a consistent reading from my calipers on the same spot on the same blade. There's just not much of a shoulder to reference on the head.

One other video on a very similar Delta planer discusses the blade setting jig and shows how to make one, including an excellent dimensioned drawing. But I'm hoping there's a simple solution here that doesn't require such fabrication. I have a paid job I need to finish ASAP, and making a blade changing jig would delay that (unless it really is the fastest way).

So, any ideas? Thank you! :)
 
Video on my model planer:


Video on the blade setting jig for the planer model that is also mentioned in the manual for mine:

 
I like that a lot. Especially at $18.99 with free Prime shipping on Amazon. :)

Thanks!
 
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