Rookie,
The biggest problem I had with the clark Modified was the depth adjustment lever. I found it very awkward to get precision movement out of it.
So what I did was to take Rubber Pipe insulation and craft a new handle on the depth adjustment lever. Now instead of the that ridiculous little marble at the end, i have a what looks like a reversed rudder about 1.5 inches thick and andbout 2 inches tall. This helped me tremendously with working the depth adjustment. As soon as i can I will post a pic of what i am talking about. Though I do think that you can buy different hadles for the depth adjustment knob commercially. But i just made my own cause it seemed very easy to do.
Here’s some advice on better ways to think about using the planer:
Shaping with the planer requires that you have both hands, arms, and lower body moving harmoniously in unison to ensure steady precision passes. This is something that I feel no one realy talks about. You get your balance from your center of gravity…your knees through your hips. This is where all physicall activity stems from and something that you need to kep in mind when shaping. Without proper body positioning, you will not have good balance and not be able to fully utilize your upper body to shape.
I know this will sound crazy but one activity that I found had an amazing benefit to shaping is, oddly enough, ballroom dancing. Bear with me peeps. If you took a look at the male position in ballroom dancing, the movement is actually quite similiar to taking long passes with the planer. Your arms and shoulder are heald very steady, whilst your lower body is constantly moving and shifting. We can see this unison of upper and lower body and how both need to work in unison to accomplish the task, in this case, not stepping over your girlie and making a general ass of one’ self.
I’m not sayig that you run out and take some ballroom lessons, but if you got a girlie that you want to impress, nothing, I mean nothing will make her swoon more than taking her dancing, and at the same time you can just pretend that you are shaping beautiful boards.
And lastly the best thing that you can do is PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. Go buy the largest, worst reject blank that you can find and have at it. Don’t worry about shaping anything. In fact forget that you are even shaping. Just take the planer and spend a few hours a day getting the feel for how it works.
Consider it cross traiing for shaping. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE PLANER. Concentrate on left hand posiion on the depth knob. Practive taking varied length passes, and then repeat, only this time continuolsy adjusting the depth knob deeper until max depth, then slowly release the depth knob as you end each pass. Draw lines on the board that tell you where to begin each pass, where to start the depth adjustment, where to end the deepenst part of the depth, and then where to end the pass. Same thing with rail passes.
I would say to do this excercise before you shape another board. That , a new depth adjustment knob, and some dancing lessons will have you much more familiar with the planer, and in no time you will become very profficient with it.
Drew