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I was excited to receive a Stewmac safety planer to use on my first attempt at a guitar neck but wasn't too thrilled when I actually went to use it. It was somewhat of a white knuckle experience and I wasn't convinced it was worth the effort. Further investigating with a dial indicator showed the perimeter of the planer was .013 out and a simple application of a sharpie to the spinning planer (cutters removed) confirmed it wasn't the drill press but the threaded arbor hole was not straight.

Stewmac understood my problem and shipped another right away (no return required). They checked one out beforehand an assured me it was less than .004 out total.

Meanwhile, I decided to bore the original to accept a pressed in shaft. I have some machining experience and access to a machine shop so this was not something that would be worth hiring out but the results were like night and day. It seems to work a bit better than the replacement, a quick touch with a sharpie shows it is more accurate.

So if you are having any doubts or problems with a safety planer, it might be worth doing the simple test with a sharpie marker

what I also know is the feed direction is critical. Be sure to use fences to control cutting. Do not over feed.
with a little practice these can be useful tools indeed

Thanks for posting this - I bought one of these and have used it a little. Then I found an original in a used antique-y place and bought that (another thread here http://www.kitguitarsforum.com/board/vi ... ner#p51774 ). I have not used the original version much, meaning to compare the two, but I will check both out as you suggest. I am NOT a machinist so won't be attempting any modifications, but it will be good to know if either is out of whack. As an aside, I waited for these to go on sale at SM, and they finally did, and now they go on sale routinely. I wonder if they had quality control issues with the ones they had manufactured for them.

It's easy enough to check and at least eliminate wobble as a problem source. I quickly sensed to always cut new material to the right of center of the planer.(doesn't matter if you are feeding from front to back, or across the front of the drill press from the left to right) The already surfaced area wont likely catch or self feed in my experience. More than a few drill press tables fall away from the column so that might cause problems as the material will in effect raise up in relation to the planer if repeat passes are made to surface an area. The instructions mention to shim the table if this condition exists.

I've heard of the Wagner safety planer and read they are similar to Stewmac. I received a Barron drill press planer with the old South Bend drill press in the photo and every time I tried it, it was scary.

When I first read your post, I misunderstood, thinking that the shaft was not centred, but now I think you mean that the shaft was not perpendicular to the body of the thing? I checked my SM version and it seems not to be perfectly centred, just by using a digital caliper to measure from shaft centre to the outside of the base. But I guess that would not necessarily affect the cut, but might introduce out-of-balance vibration. I have to check again for the fault you found.