On Sun, 19 Feb 2006 03:43:22 +0000, John Rumm
wrote:

In case anyone is in the market for a portable planer/thicknesser, I
thought the following notes may be useful. When reading these, bear in
mind that I have only used the portable class of machines in the past
and so can't give any real feel for how these units in compare with the
solid cast iron workshop class machines.

I had been looking about for a thicknesser for some time and had
considered a number of possible candidates. My planned usage was for
ongoing hobby use, plus the occasional bit of more intensive
DIY/building work. Something that could achieve a good finish quality
was high on the list of requirements.

The bargain basement stuff I looked at did not impress too much - there
seem to be a handful of models that get badged by all sorts, which
seemed a bit rough in construction. All had short tables (and hence
were probably rather snipey). Also at the low end was the slightly more
reasonable looking Perform model at Axminster, although the small dust
port and lower power put me off a bit. The Axminster CT330 looked like a
nice unit but was perhaps a tad more than I wanted to pay. In the end I
decided on one of the SIP models as a reasonable compromise at around
the £250 mark. Just before ordering however, I stumbled over a dealer on
eBay offering the aforementioned higher spec DeWalt machine as a
"factory rework" unit for similar money. So clicked the "buy it now"
button![1]

Having now used it a bit for a few different tasks my initial
impressions a

Very solid construction - nicely made, heavier than many at about 34kg.
The fold down tables are very solid and quite long (over 0.5m in total).
The tables have a highly polished mirror smooth finish. This is the
first DeWalt tool I have owned, and it is very clearly not just a yellow
B&D, but firmly in the Makita / Blue Bosch class.

I've used one of these a few times in the past and a couple of friends
in the U.S. have this model. None would say that this type of
machine generically is going to produce the same quality of result as
a larger fixed machine with long tables, but they are all able to turn
out very good work with it.

I was just looking through a review by Fine Woodworking of a couple of
years ago on a range of portable thickness planers and their
conclusions were about the same as yours - i.e. there are a number of
generic entry level machines around (Grizzly, Geetech, Central, ..)
that are similar to the Axminster offerings (sub $300). Results were
inconsistent - i.e. good in some areas, lousy in others and not
consistent between what were basically similar machines.

DW was in the mid range and came out the best of this bunch.
The reviewer noted the very low snipe which seemed to be partly as a
result of having a cutterhead lock. The other machines didn't have
that.

There was a higher cost category including Makita and (curiously)
Ridgid. The main benefits of these were not in terms of quality of
result - the DW did better both in terms of snipe and parallelism -
but convenience. The Makita has some quick release and fit blade
arrangements and a good depth gauge. However it is nearly $500 vs
the $350 (at the time) of the DW.

I've sent you a copy of the review.





Good bits:

There is much that I have found to like about this unit:

The most notable thing is the shear quality of the finish that is
achievable. The belt driven cutter assembly on this model spins at 10K
rpm giving 20k cuts per min. When taking a fine pass, the finish is
suburb - almost polished. Yielding results superior to much shop bought
PAR timber with none of the tell tail machine planed ripple in the surface.

There is a clear and easy to read depth gauge with indicator needle. The
crank leaver (which can fold down for transportation) is also calibrated
in mm of material removal. In addition there is a material removal gauge
that shows how much will be planed from the timber sitting just before
the first feed roller - so it is easy to (say) take 1mm off without
needing to have done a previous pass to know that the cutter is aligned
with the top surface of the timber. Finally on the measurement front
there is a pre-set depth stop that allows common timber thickness to be
dialled up. This prevents the cutter head being lowered below the
pre-set thickness.

The unit has a four column support for the planer head, that also has a
lock bar. When this is engaged there is practically no visible snipe at
all! Armed with a set of roller stands I have found it easy to plane
even long stock and still be able to use all of it including the ends.
(even without engaging the lock there is very little snipe so it is easy
to plane mostly to thickness and just apply the lock on the final pass
or two).

I found an article with a project to make a portable set of
infeed/outfeed tables that you might find useful. One of my US
friends made one of these and it helps a lot with longer or wider
pieces - especially hardwoods. I'll send you that as well.



Power seems good, but then again I have not tried planing any 12" wide
oak board yet!

The point is to have freahly sharp knives and not to attempt to plane
too much at a time.

The FWW review indicated that the DW knives could be sharpened up to 5
times if you wanted.

If you are going to work with hardwoods, proper dust extraction is
really important as dust tends to be finer and more irritant than with
softwoods. Generally I notice in my dust collector that there is a
greater proportion of finer dust to chips from hardwoods than from
softwoods.


The machine has a tool storage tray built in that retain all the
adjustment tools and blade setting blocks etc on the machine so it ought
to be harder to lose them!

Not so good bits:

Like most machines of this type, dust collection is via a shroud that
fits on to the back of the planer block. This is nicely made with an
angled side exit port. The port is also rounded over at the end which
makes sliding the hose onto it easy (unlike some of the wobbly steel
tubes provided on some models). However with it in place you are unable
to fold up the rear table. Given the long length of the table this also
makes storage of the machine harder. To make matters worse the shroud
takes a few mins to attach or remove - being fastened with three pan
head screws and shake washers. A bit of work with some thumb nuts on
protruding studs would have made this much quicker and less fiddly. Some
sort of quick release clip would have been better still.

The carry handles on the machine slide in and out from the body of the
machine rather than simply being recesses. This does actually make it
easier to pull the machine toward you with one handle (say unloading
from the back of an estate car), but alas they are also free to slide
shut onto your hands if you carry the machine at an angle, making them
less comfortable in some cases.

Care is needed with the lock bar when planing thick timber. Firstly the
positioning of it means that it is slightly fiddly to get hold of as it
becomes mostly covered by the top of the machine. Also when released it
springs back with reasonable force which can bang the back of your hand
into the top of the machine if you are not careful.

Finally there are no top mounted rollers to make passing stock back over
the machine easy when planing with the help of an assistant.

The technical spec can be found he

http://www.dewalt.co.uk/products.asp...etid=9&sid =1
http://tinyurl.com/aan2z




[1] Great service from the dealer BTW - fixit powertools in colwyn bay
(eBay handle "tools-uk") - contacted me to apologise that they had in
fact only one of these units to sell and not the three they thought they
had - hence they could not supply straight away. They tried to get
another factory rework from DeWalt, but could not get one soon enough.
So I asked them to quote for a brand new unit, which they did, and beat
the best online price I could find. So in the end I spent another 55
quid for a brand new unit.

--

..andy