Was going to put this in my silver lining thread, but it will get lost there. I rarely do tool reviews unless I have had extensive use, so I am breaking the mould a bit here as it is pertinent to my projects currently.
Cost about £240 on line. 7” or 180 mm width. 240V.
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I bought this because there comes a point when belt sanding sawn oak beams becomes tedious and slow. I needed to crack on.
I do have a PT, but it is completely impossible for me to put 6” oak beams that are typically 3m long across it, working alone. For framing work or anything in heavy timber, you have to take the tool to the timber,
Mafell make an excellent one (see the silver lining thread) but it is over £3,000. I have a Mafell track saw and it is superb, but I couldn’t afford or remotely justify £3k+ for a tool I would not use much.
I’ve used this Triton planer to do a fairly big pile of 6” beams and about 30 4” by 4” sections or 2” by 4”. And I kid you not, I have produced about a cubic metre of shavings in about 2 days.
Pros: It is a massive time saver. The finish does not leave tramlines as smaller planers do - because for the work I am doing it is wider than the wood!
The machine will cut several mm deep, but in my experience of electric planers that is always a bad idea. So I cut between 0.5mm and at most 1mm per cut. Typically each face of a 6” sawn beam will require two or three cuts to get a clean finish. Zero sanding required usually.
Factors to bear in mind: it is reasonably heavy. Fine for me but I am quite a big fella. There is a spring loaded drop down shoe to prevent the blade catching when you put it down. But take care - it takes a while for the blade to stop.
Getting the blades off is easy. They are straight and sharpen-able. I have given mine a touch up. Set of blades is cheap.
Cons. It has a dust port. Works from one side only. However, you can pretty much forget chip extraction unless you own a dust bag factory. Obviously this is a take the tool to the work machine so you will be using a portable extractor.
For its intended purpose this thing chucks out a huge amount of chips and will quickly overwhelm the portable extractor. Hard to spot this until you realise chips are literally everywhere. The port will block. Then compact. The chips are not dusty really but I wear my electric hood anyway. Rig a sheet or something to catch the chips. My wife uses them on her kitchen garden paths. She is knee deep in the stuff.
Con 2. It has an adjustable side fence that you can set to different angles. Hilarious. You can forget using that too. This tool is excellent but it is more of a blunt instrument than a surgical scalpel.
If you want to take out things like humps, typically found in faces above knots, where branches emerged, I think it is better to get your hand plane out and deal with the localised area rather than using this. It is at it’s best doing full lengths.
Conclusion: for anyone doing stuff with heavy sawn timber (nail free!!!) that needs a good finish in a short time, this machine at under £250 is a total no brainer. Excellent machine at a silly price. Highly recommended if you have a need.
Post Covid I suspect Chinese made. Chinese made stuff will soon be far less readily available and not as cheap. If you think you will need this, then I would buy now. Not that I am giving advice.
