Shopsmith Forums

Hi, I inherited this pro planer from my father.

The outfeed roller was in pretty tough shape. Since it was on back order through Shopsmith, I found a place that could re-surface it for me. The in feed roller is another story though.

This is been working fine for the last year or so. While troubleshooting a minor problem today, I found that the knurled in feed roller is bent.

I’m definitely going to be calling Shopsmith to get a replacement ordered. But, I want to make darn sure I don’t do the same thing to the new roller.

Any tips on what might’ve happened, and how to keep from doing this again? I’ve had this torn down to replace the outfeed roller, and I sure don’t want to do it again unless I have to. It is definitely not a job for the faint of heart.

I will give a shout out of thanks to Shopsmith for the excellent instructions in the manual on how to disassemble this.

That’s the first time I’ve heard of a bent in-feed roller. My first thought was that someone must have fed it a board thick enough to use up all of the roller-spring travel and then some. That could generate a whale of a lot of upward force on the roller. But the front top cover, if installed, is low enough to prevent feeding a board that thick.

But now that you mention it, the front cover on mine was bent upward a bit when I bought it. That can happen if you feed it a rough-cut board with a tapering thickness, thin end first. With a severe taper (think wedge), I suppose it could bend both the front cover and the in-feed roller.

I am not sure how one could possibly bend either the in feed or out feed rollers. Can you post pictures of how you determined it is bent?

Yes, if I can post a video, it will be obvious. I'll try to do that this afternoon.

I video of this will be interesting to view but I seriously doubt that there will be a clue of what caused the bent roller.

Is there not a steel bar above the infeed table that limits the height of the board being fed in?

Yes, there is a bar and it’s got it I kick back claws, or whatever they’re called.

KD8MQ wrote:Yes, there is a bar and it’s got it I kick back claws, or whatever they’re called.

Just ahead of the bar with the kick-back claws is another bar. I believe that bar height above the table is intended to limit the thickness of what is being fed in. If that is correct, it seems that this would eliminate that theory as to what caused the bent roller (which I cannot imagine).

I posted two videos on my website. The URL is:

http://kd8mq.net/shopsmith-planer-infield-roller/

OK, I'll check further when I get home this afternoon. Thanks!

I don't know exactly how it could have been bent either, but in your videos it definitely appears to have been. Perhaps a long heavy board was unsupported as it was starting to be fed thru and pushed up on the infeed roller.

In any event, ordering a new one from Shopsmith seems like the safest bet. I did search ebay and found a used one for sale, in case that interests you.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Shopsmith-Mark ... SwRwxcbH~0

For the record, I do not know this ebay seller or have any financial interest. I have simply noticed that this seller frequently has used surface planer parts, seems to have reasonable prices, allows returns, and has a good feedback rating.