# planers



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Sorry, I can't, but if you're able to pick up a used one of these, you won't be sorry. Still have mine from late 1970's. Makita 2040 - 16"

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KRLuDxKEx1s/UZ-ds03QExI/AAAAAAAAMm0/oxykOruCt_A/s1600/CIMG6309.JPG


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

The better Dewalt one is good.


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

I don't have any past experience with HD, HF or Sears planers.

I do have a 13" Grizzly floor model planer that I like, but new its about twice the cost of the tabletop planers. But before you make a choice on what to buy, make sure you investigate replacement blades and their costs. Some planers use 'disposable' blades which aren't meant to be sharpened. That is OK if that is what you want, but explore those choices/costs before you buy.


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## TNTBEES (Apr 14, 2012)

I wore out a Dewalt 12 1/2". It planed a lot of boards. I replaced it with a delta 15" floor model. I bought it from an online auction site called MachineryMax. It was brand new in the box. It retailed for about $1200. I paid $575 including shipping. Check out their site they have some pretty amazing deals.


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## Steve zone 5 WI (Jan 2, 2013)

Have you checked craigslist? Sometimes you can find a good used floor model cheaper than a new bench-top because not many people "need" a 18 or a 20" planer so they don't sell fast 

I have a Delta 12.5" and it works fine as long as it has sharp knives. And there's the problem. Fleet Farm here is WI sells the planer but not replacement knives. :scratch:

I also purchased a used Woodmaster 718 for $450. Knives are $80 a set

I like the Woodmaster for larger jobs like a pile of rough cut lumber.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

We picked up a 12" Powermatic planer, made when Ike was president, cast iron, 300 lbs, 3 hp , 3 phase. Don't send a boy to do a man's job. It was pricey(less than 1K), but well worth it if you need to make alot of 3/8th" material for innercovers and roofs. 

Crazy Roland


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

That three phase sucker has to make the electric meter spin!


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## bowhuntaz (Dec 30, 2013)

A planer is a wise investment, but choosing one that's not up to the tasks you're going to ask of it, you'll be mad at it and yourself.
If you're a weekend warrior, a bench top model will get it done. 
If you're remotely serious about woodworking, go bigger. I promise you'll be glad you did.
I started with a bench model, and killed it within 6 months. 
I skipped over the mid grade models and right into a 3hp 20" spiral head beast that weighed in at 1400#.
But, the money was well worth the results.
I could hog rough lumber 3/16"at a pass.
The finish was almost stain ready.
I realize that there's budgetary considerations, but buying the right piece of equipment initially saves a lot of time and hassle in the long term.


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## Hautions11 (Jun 20, 2013)

I ran a 12 1/2 delta Bech top for years. Great for small jobs but doing a pile of rough sawn is tedious. I recently bought a 15" 3 hp shop Fox from a school. $600 but a pure joy to use.


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## woodsy (Mar 3, 2013)

Like others have said, the box shop 12-13" planers are good for hobby woodworkers. 

I needed one many years ago and bought a portable 13" Rigid with stand from home depot. ($350 ?)

On my 12" rough sawn pine boards it took several passes to get both sides smooth because it would only take a 1/32" to 1/16"
per pass without much trouble. Works well on narrower boards though and have passed thousands of lineal feet through it.

But if i had to do it over knowing how much wood has been planed i would go bigger .


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## VanIslander (Aug 19, 2013)

I've had a Delta portable planer almost identical to this one, for somewhere between 10 & 15 years, and it's still going strong. It was on sale for just over $200 at the time. I'm a hobbiest, but have run a ton of wood thru this machine over the years. As others have reported, a 1/16th of an inch is about as much as it wants to take in one pass, depending on the wood species -- maybe a bit more with soft woods like pine and cedar. I do a lot of wood segmenting and run it thru with no problem. Lot of furniture with shelves made of strips of wood glued together -- again, no problem. It came with a spare set of blades (that are a bugger to re & re...), but it provides an extremely smooth surface requiring only a light sanding before finish. The cuts are accurate with opposite sides perfectly parallel.

It's greatest issue -- not mentioned here yet -- is snipe. Even with carefully aligned rollers to bear the weight of the wood passing thru, it still takes a pretty good bite from the end of the piece. I've largely overcome that with sacrificial follower boards, that take the snipe cuts as they pass thru behind. With smaller boards, I've used a hot glue gun to to quickly glue longer sacrificial pieces to the work, and knock them off with a hammer when done. It's a PIA, doing this... 

More expensive higher quality planers don't have snipe issues.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

the dewalt portable has heavier blades than the rest. I am told that the rigid portable is also good and has the best warranty. I have had a dewalt for years, the heavier knives make a difference I think.


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## Michael B (Feb 6, 2010)

I picked up the Ridgid 13" bench top planer. I give it a 7 out of 10. It works decent. The blades are very sharp but rather thin. They dull very quickly and are reversible. The reason I don't give it a 10 is the snipe factor is next to impossible to over come. The in and out feed tables are perfectly level and ends of the boards get sniped. I now run 14' thru at a time any just cut off the last 3".


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Vance wrote:

That three phase sucker has to make the electric meter spin! 

I use an inverter, which seems to help. I will try to check it. Never noticed it that much on the bill, but it you get done in a few days what might take a week with smaller unit.

Crazy Roland


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## woodsy (Mar 3, 2013)

If you are only planing boards 10" or less and not tens of thousands lineal feet of lumber than the smaller planers would probably
do anyone just fine. Portable is nice if you don't have much shop space. You can get it out of the way when you don't need it.
I had about 400 lin ft. of 1x14 to 1x16" rough pine boards hanging around forever and finally got an order for a wide pine stereo cabinet so trucked it to the mill to get planed to the tune of $110.00. 
Snipe can be a problem at times so got use to planing before trimming to desired length when possible.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

a 3 phase motor is always more efficient than a similar single phase motor. the problem is that most non industrial areas only have single phase available. in my area 3 phase is commercial rate which is 3 times residential rate, I am lucky 3 phase is not available here...... there are 3 basic ways to change single phase into 3 phase to run a 3phase motor.....the cheapest way is a capacitor box type, this will only give you 2/3 of the motors rated output. the motor and converter will overheat above this. this takes more power than true 3 phase, but it is cheap, best suited where the motor is only under light load without much of a start load...... a solid state inverter is a lot more money, it must be over sized with single phase input, a 10hp 3 phase motor would require a 15 hp or 20 hp inverter depending on application, this is the clear choice for variable speed applications. a solid state inverter should only be used with a motor that is rated "inverter rated", this means better windings in the motor, these solid state units are high tech, they cannot stand lighting and power surges...... for single speed heavy loads [planer] the best choice is a rotary inverter. it should be sized as close as possible to the load without being undersized, about 1 1/2 times size or less. the rotaries are dependable and low maintainence.......a few years back a local machine shop way back in the woods built there own rotary that was a bit different, it used so little electricity that the power co. investigated, changed meters and sent out spies. the power co. then sent up engineers from over a hundred miles away to try and figure out why it worked so well.


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## tommysnare (Jan 30, 2013)

We have an inexpensive ryobi in my woodshop. Bought it used... Even cheaper lol. It does 12" no problem and has become a real asset for us. Been goin for years with no problems. Only had to change the knives once. I can't afford $1000 do.lars for a "better" one. 
I did adda leveling board to it for getting boards perfectly level though. Not hard at all.

It's a great planer for the price and will just buy the same one again if it ever fails.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Matheson - Good points. I run the planer at 60hz for roughing, and 90 hz. for finishing. Saves a little time.

Open loop vectorless Inverters are pretty reasonable, and easy to set up. Tell them about Baldor vector drives, what they can do. Mine had me outsmarted for 3 weeks.

Crazy Roland


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

I have the Dewalt 13. It was as fancy as my budget would allow. For the most part I go with the wood magazine or the Fine woodworking recommendations and both rated it as the best of the bench tops. It has been some years ago so maybe check again, they seem to be really accurate on their equipment reviews.
Not mentioned here is dust/ chip collection: The fan is so strong on the DW that it will actually overwhelm my collector. Without a dust collector is a fan off the rear to diffuse the exhaust but it throws an impressive load of sawdust 30’ out the driveway. I made a separator out or a garbage can that now takes up as much space as the floor mounted unit would have. 
For the snipe I built a table that has feet. The unit is clamped to the table saw and the mdf table is 5’ long that fits my table saw with extension table.
Blade change is easy, they are two sided and about $40 on amazon. I dulled a set of blades in a weekend (black walnut) and complained about the blade life to the MFG and they sent me another set free of charge. 
If I had to do it again I would go right now and buy another one.


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## Cedar Ridge Bees (May 29, 2011)

I have been runnig the Dewalt 13 for a number of years and have recently been planing a lot of rough lumber. I switched to the spiral cutter head $275 I think from eBay and it has made all the difference. I run have hickory, white oak, black walnut, cherry and sycamore thru it and it is still on the first side of the cutters. It gnaws right thru a 12" sycamore no problem

Kent


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## Cleo C. Hogan Jr (Feb 27, 2010)

If you are making bee equipment, look for a Delta 22-560 on Craigs list for $100 - $150.00. Cut your rough saw wood to length before planing and it will go a lot faster. I have 3 of these, and I would rate it 9.9 out of 10. Only drawback is an occasional snipe. Keep sharp blades. They are only $29.95 a set.

cchoganjr


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

Cleo, do you mean width or length? If I get snipe after cutting to length then my joinery does not work out as well.


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## Cleo C. Hogan Jr (Feb 27, 2010)

Cut both length and width, before planing, unless you are getting excessive snipe. My 3, 22-560 rarely snipe enough to be concerned. A belt sander will take it right out.

cchoganjr


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Sniping can largely be controlled/eliminated by simply leveraging the board as you feed it and remove it. The end of the board is getting pulled up into the cutter head so counter this by prying the ends down to the table. Lift the opposite end from the cutter up a tad forcing the other end down.


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## Ross (Apr 30, 2003)

The bees won't notice the snipe at all.


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## LizardKing (Feb 12, 2014)

Barry said:


> Sniping can largely be controlled/eliminated by simply leveraging the board as you feed it and remove it. The end of the board is getting pulled up into the cutter head so counter this by prying the ends down to the table. Lift the opposite end from the cutter up a tad forcing the other end down.


Hmmmmm, wonder if adjusting the feed tables to do the same thing would help?


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

I don't follow. The only thing that moves in the process of planing is the board. Everything else is fixed. If anything, I think the rollers may need adjusting, more pressure. My planer doesn't snipe.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

We have 2 pairs of drive rollers in ours, one pair before, and one pair after the cutter. If I adjust up the lower rollers too far up, the cutter bites differently as the board climbs and falls off the bottom roller. I have found if I set them "proud" of the surface by about 10 "thou", I get minimal cutter digs. Your results may vary. 

Crazy Roland


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## Cleo C. Hogan Jr (Feb 27, 2010)

Ross... My bees don't notice it either. HA!!!,

But, I rarely get snipe.

cchoganjr


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

After I plane I cut to length. I then stack and clamp 6 or 8 sides together to push through the dato on the saw using my finger jig. If I have snipe on the ends the board wants to not fit flat on the saw table or the clamped stack wants to rock. I also built a jig to square and nail the boards. If I sand the ends to make them less noticeable from the snipe the fingers stand proud and show off the mistake unless I sand them again. Since I use two screws to let the glue set (so I can rotate in the jig) I sand off the ends of the coated deck screws. I guess what it comes down to is when I go from building furniture I expect the same craftsmanship from myself. Snipe is 3” of firewood, not a joint face,


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

Snipe is pretty easy to minimize.


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

So is pregnancy but they both seem to keep happening!:lpf:


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

yeah


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## newbeeguy (Feb 20, 2014)

Hey everybody thanks for all the talk. I want to go to a portable because I get snipe with my hand power plane, and I don't have much room in my shop. I didn't know about spiral blades either, I thought all planers had straight blades, so I will look into that. I have a Ryobi hand plane and like it except as noted. I use my shop vac, with home made wood adapters on most of my power tools for dust control, but it is not a perfect solution by far, and I will have to see about that. I am looking for a general purpose planer, but thinking a lot about ceder fence boards, because they smell good, they are cheepo, and the wood looks nice when the rough cut is planed down smooth.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

I'm going to buy a Ridgid 4331 pretty soon. Ridgid is offering a lifetime warranty for the original purchaser on the unit. It has some double sided blades which I've been able to sharpen in the past for a friend. Two guys I know have them and haven't had problems with theirs in the past few years.


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## texman034 (Feb 19, 2015)

I have the dewalt 13 in DW735. I can't keep a set of blades sharp. Not sure what type of wood I have because I picked up a stack really cheap. The guy said he thought it was sweetgum but wasn't sure. I have been looking at the shellix head made by Byrd Tools. It is quite pricy though. Anyone used it, is it worth it?


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## tazke (Mar 23, 2015)

If you do go the bench top used route, make sure you raise it up and check the in-feed and out-feed rollers real well. I have one that the in feed roller dry rotted on and ripped a huge chunk of the rubber stuff off. Unfortunately I have not been able to find a replacement, when I called the company they said they no longer carried the in-feed as a replacement part and recommended I look for a used one. Saving up for large floor type.


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## PAddlemaker (Feb 28, 2016)

newbeeguy said:


> I think 13 inches is about right, as it will handle up to a 12 by. If anyone has tried out the models from sears or hf or hd and can relate your experience and satisfaction level that would be great.


I've owned the Harborfreight, "Central Machinery", 12 inch planer for a year now with excellent results and minimal snipe. 

I got it on sale at $ 289.oo, minus 20% off additionally with a coupon; at a time when FREE shipping was being offered. $ 245.07 w/tax.

The HF model is identical to the low end "Grizzley" bench top planer.

Ridgid makes some good tools, however; to get the "Lifetime" Service Warranty you MUST register it ! If you don't it's only a 2 year limited warranty. They will make you jump through some hoops to become registered "properly". Make certain to get verification and keep your receipts.


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## minz (Jan 15, 2011)

texman034 said:


> I have the dewalt 13 in DW735. I can't keep a set of blades sharp. Not sure what type of wood I have because I picked up a stack really cheap. The guy said he thought it was sweetgum but wasn't sure. I have been looking at the shellix head made by Byrd Tools. It is quite pricy though. Anyone used it, is it worth it?


Some of the types of wood have a high silica content that just eats blades. I also looked at the Shellix head but figured I could push a bunch of wood through the planer. I sent Dewalt a nasty letter about the quality of their blades on just running it on walnut and they sent me a set free of charge.


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## dp2k (Apr 22, 2012)

The current issue of Fine Woodworking just reviewed them - I've owned a few, and the differences you notice are things like dust collection, noise etc.


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## Cleo C. Hogan Jr (Feb 27, 2010)

newbeeguy said:


> can relate your experience and satisfaction level that would be great.


You can pick up a very good Delta 22-560 on Craigs List for $150.00 I have 3 in my wood working shop and they are fantastic planers. Rare to no snipe, and new blades are about $29.95. Almost any good tool place will carry them, (Lowes, Home Depot, etc.) 

I use all rough cut sawmill lumber, (poplar, pine, cypress) and a set of blades will make about 200 to 300 boxes or about 150 to 200 complete hives, (bottom board, brood chamber, inner cover, top). 

IMO unless you are going truly commercial a good bench top will do all you need to do. I have made a couple hundred complete hives, plus additional supers each year for several years and the Delta 22-560 has been great. All I needed.

But, if you can pick up a good Grizzly, Powermatic, Delta, floor model, I would also go that route. I just never needed one, I liked the Delta 22-560 so much, that I stayed with the 22-560's.

cchoganjr


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