Plane and simple

(Okay, I groaned at that one a little myself!)

 

I decided it was time to start replacing the crappy random furniture pieces in Julie’s and my bedroom.  The first piece to go is the shoddy Ikea dresser we’ve been sharing since she moved in.  We wanted something nice, with more capacity.  So I bought a supply of cherry and walnut and went to work.

Naturally, since I had just recently built a nice base and outfeed support for my ancient luggable planer, I had a planer problem:

That track has a texture like an old vinyl record but much rougher; it’s hard to tell whether it’s proud of the surface or gouged into it.  But this happened immediately after changing the knives, so clearly it’s a knife problem, right?

Nope.  Shifting the brand-new knives did not change the size or position of the track.  I ordered another new pair of knives, waited a few days, and then changed them, also taking time to look for signs of crud or burrs in the cutterhead.  I did file down an area that looked rough near the location of the track before installing the new knives.  I also used magnetic Planer Pals to make sure I had the knives properly positioned.  The track became less prominent, but still there.  So it had to be something wrong with the planer itself, either something in the cutterhead (possibly that rough area I filed) or the outfeed roller.  I looked hard, found nothing.

Replacing the cutterhead or feed rollers wasn’t going to happen.  Penn State abandoned this planer, along with almost everything else they made except pen-making stuff and a few dust collectors, over a decade ago.  They didn’t even bother answering my email asking about replacement knives this time.  It was time to modernize.

My first thought was admittedly a pipe dream:  I looked at 12-inch jointer/planer combo machines, figuring that I could justify the floor space for a combo because it would get me a jointer and a planer in the same footprint.  But these machines appear to come in only two categories:  mediocre ones for $800-$1,000 and good ones for $2000 and up.  A good one would also require me to add a 220V circuit to the shop.  Too much.  So I scaled back and looked at the current generation of portable thickness planers.  After reading a lot of reviews, I settled on this one:
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Every review I read rated the DeWalt 735 as a top pick.  It is powerful, accurate — almost no detectable snipe when the optional extension tables are used — and has a lot of very nice features.  I like the double-edged, disposable knives because they are very easy to change.  After having to tighten seven nuts per knife with a crescent wrench while holding the razor-sharp knife in alignment using my fingers or magnets, I appreciate that a lot.  The 13-inch usable width is a little more than my old one, but that wasn’t really a big deal for me as much as the ubiquity of the brand and the certainty that I’ll be able to get knives for it for a long time.

One useful tip I picked up from the reviewers told me that yes, I really wanted those extension tables.  They’re a $50 accessory, but without them the 735 does snipe enough that you have to plan on discarding the first and last few inches of each piece.  Since the 735X kit includes those tables and a spare set of knives for slightly less than the bare planer and the accessory tables, buying the kit was a no-brainer.  I also noticed that the 735 planer weighs 92 pounds (!) and decided that the DW7350 mobile planer stand was not optional.

My son Ben came by today and helped me assemble everything.  The stand went together easily (much easier with two people than it would have been alone), and the MDF top is pre-drilled for DeWalt’s 733, 734, and 735 planers so mounting it to the base was a snap.

I ran some cherry and poplar pieces through it just to get a feel for the planer, and I have to say I am very impressed.  It’s no louder than the old Penn State planer was (you still want hearing protection!) but the quality of the surface it produced on high speed was definitely superior, and on low speed the stock came out glass smooth.  It adjusts smoothly, 1/16 inch per full rotation of the crank, so it’s very easy to regulate how much you want to take off with a pass.  Its chip removal is outstanding even if you forget to hook up the dust collector, as I did.

One common thread I saw in planer discussions was people asking what the difference is between the 735 and DeWalt’s 734 or 733.  The most common answer was, “One inch and $150.”  I actually think that’s a poor answer.  The real difference between the 735 and the next tier down, whether that’s the DeWalt 734 or comparable machines from Makita, Rigid, et al, is fundamental design.  The 734, Makita, etc are improved versions of the standard 2-post (or 2-metal-channel) luggable planer design that’s been around for 25 years, and of which my old Penn State was an early example.  The 735 is actually a scaled-down version of a stationary planer.  It’s got a much deeper stance — it’s footprint is about as deep as it is wide, where the others only measure 8 inches or so front to back — and the idea that someone would pick this up, drop it onto a pair of sawhorses, and start planing is ludicrous.  Two guys could put it in a truck and take it to the jobsite, but that’s about as portable as the 735 gets.

Now that I’ve used it, I suspect this planer is probably overkill for my shop and I may regret the floor space it will take up.  But damn, I do like this thing.

 

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