Contents
- POWERTEC PL1251 2-Blade Benchtop Thickness Planer (Best for the Money) …
- DEWALT Benchtop Planer, Single Speed, 12-1/2-Inch (DW734) …
- DEWALT Thickness Planer, Two Speed, 13-Inch (DW735X) (Our Top Recommended) …
- WEN 6552T 13 Inch 3-Blade Benchtop Corded Thickness Planer.
Both the planer and the circular saw are powerful electric-powered tools; they do much the same work that the jack plane and handsaw do, or once did, but they do it more quickly, sometimes more efficiently and accurately, and always at a higher decibel level.
- Electric Planers. Electric planers are powered by electricity just as the name suggests. …
- Cost. Cost of various types of planers varies depending on the manufacturer of the equipment and quality of the tool. …
- Efficiency And Convenience. …
- Flexibility and ease to use.
- Motor. A benchtop planer’s motor needs enough power to get the job done. …
- Blade. Thickness planer blades, also known as knives, come in two styles: straight and spiral. …
- Cutting Depth. …
- Allowance. …
- Snipe. …
- Gauge and Depth Stop. …
- Speed. …
- Dust Collection.
A power planer’s primary function is to smooth the surface of wood, but it can also be used to smooth wood’s rough end grain. It’s also used for tapering wood. If a door is too wide, for instance, make passes with a power planer over the side of the door, adjusting the depth gauge to give a cut of the desired depth.
Think of buying a benchtop planer as an investment that pays dividends in lumber savings. … Although these machines get the job done, don’t mistake them for heavy-duty planers with beefy 3-hp and larger motors, which can chew through hardwoods quickly and handle deeper cuts without bogging down.
A jointer creates a flat surface on wood, and yes, it can be used to correct bow and warp on one side of a board at a time. “A planer is a thicknesser. It takes a thick board and makes it thinner. … At the same time, the planer will also make the rough side both smooth, and parallel to the other side.
If you really want to get into woodworking, a thickness planer is worth the cost. Once you have it, you’ll never regret the expenditure, because you’ll be in control of your stock thickness like never before. … A fellow member might be willing to thickness-plane some stock for you for little or nothing.
In order to flatten a warped, twisted, or cupped board, a common approach is to first use a jointer to create one perfectly flat face. Then you run the board through a thickness planer with the flat face downward, and the planer makes the top face parallel to the bottom.
Smooth rough-cut wood stock with a planer. The planer is a tool for woodworkers who require large quantities of planed stock and who elect to buy it rough cut. … It, too, cuts with a cutterhead, but the planer smooths the face of much wider stock.
Your first purchases should be a low-angle block plane and a shoulder plane, above. Both help you put a refining touch on the less-than-perfect cuts produced by your power tools. For example, with a few strokes, a finely tuned low-angle block plane shaves burn marks or fuzz off end grain that saw blades leave behind.
Some believe you should get as much capacity as possible, and others think you shouldn’t go much wider than your jointer bed. But even the smallest planer on the market is going to be about 12″ wide, which is significantly wider that most of our jointers.
Simply put, a wood planer is a woodworking tool, which can be used for producing boards of even thickness that also happen to be totally flat on either side.
Electric hand planers are great little tools in the right conditions and can save time and effort when used correctly. Make sure that you never lay any plane flat on it’s blade, even if the blade is fully retracted, best to lay planes on their side or mount them so the base is angles away.
Examine the width of the lumber. Most planers remove a maximum of 3 mm per pass. If a narrow piece of lumber is being planed, the maximum amount may be removed. A piece that it at the maximum width of the planer may cause the motor to overheat and the cutter to stall.
What should you avoid when using a jointer or planer? Do not cut stock that has loose knots, splits, defects or foreign objects (e.g., metal stone) in it. Do not leave the machine running unattended.
In my opinion, you should purchase the planer first. You’ll be able to accomplish more with it on its own than you can with a jointer. The jointer excels at making one flat face and one square/flat edge and that’s about it.
If you’re a woodworker who needs to straighten or smooth wood, a hand plane is a must for your tool set. Whether shaving down a wood door that’s sticking or smoothing the surface of a wavy board, no tool works quite as well as a hand plane.
Woodworking jointers and planers are used to mill wood so they can be used to build furniture and other projects to correct dimensions. If your workshop doesn’t have a jointer to square up an edge or your wood piece is too large to fit through, you can use your planer to flatten both pieces of wood.
A planer is used to shave wood from the surface of boards. Imagine scraping a knife across the top of a block of butter. That’s pretty much the action with a planer – though you might need a bit more muscle power! They’re used to make a rough surface flat and smooth, or to reduce its thickness.
The only difference between the DW735X and the DW735 is that the DW735X comes with infield and outfeed tables for the planer, and an extra set of planer knives for the cutterhead. … While the DW735 is just the planer machine without the infeed and outfeed tables and the extra planer knifes.
It is difficult to flatten a cupped board with a thickness planer because the downward pressure of the feed rolls will press out much of the cup, thereby not allowing the planer knives to flatten the board.
Once you’ve flattened one side, you can flip the work and run it through the planer with the flat side down (no sled required) to flatten the other side and ensure that it’s parallel to the first side.
Nothing beats owning a wood planer when you need to smooth boards and mill them to an exact thickness. Woodworking planers used to be found only at cabinet and millwork shops. … If you do any remodeling, deck building or woodworking, you’ll never regret the investment in a woodworking router planer.
Whereas sanders are used to alter the finish of wood, a wood planer is used to even out wood to an exact thickness. … With a planer you can smooth rough lumber, clean up sawn edges and give new life to old wood. Each planed piece of wood can be used by itself or glued to other planed pieces for a thicker board or block.
Answer from Lee Grindinger: “A planer will remove stock much, much more quickly than a drum sander. A sander is built to sand. For surfacing you’d be using a very coarse grit and this means several grit changes to get to the smoothness you’re looking for in a drum sander.
The No. 6, also called a ‘fore’ hand plane is good for jointing edges and flattening and smoothing large surfaces, such as table tops, panels and workbench tops, where you might not want or need the length or weight of a larger plane.
Bench or ‘Jack’ planes have a long base and are used for the initial preparation of rough timber. Made with a quality grey cast iron body for strength and stability with precision ground base and sides for flatness and squareness.
You can tell a lot about what a plane is supposed to do by the length of its sole. Smoothing planes have a sole that ranges from 5″ to 10″ long. The primary job of the smoothing plane is to prepare the wood for finishing. … The fore plane is typically the first bench plane to touch the wood to get it to rough size.
Making your own planer from a router is easy, and it works with any router you have. Once the router sled is made you can use it for all kinds of projects, and converting the router into a planer any time you need it takes less than a minute. … Any router. Straight router bit (or just get a set that has one in it)
The DW735X has a 13 inch width capacity which is the widest you’re going to get with any portable planer.
The minimum planing thickness of theplaners is 1/8″.