Electric hand planers

[Kittyhawk]

I have a couple of hand planers plus a few other power tools courtesy of my son.
He doesn't give them to me as as such - I retrieve them from his workshop rubbish bin when we go to visit. He is not a professional woodworker but nonetheless a skilled one and I'd be glad to claim a couple of his projects as my own work but my God, is he hard on power tools. He is seemingly blind to or rather deaf to the sound of some tool screaming its head off in agony as he overloads it beyond its endurance up to the point where it expires in a haze of smoke. But he's not biased against power tools - any mechanical contrivance he gets his hands on is equally at risk. Hard to understand because in everything else he is a gentle, caring man.
So I retrieve and repair them, usually nothing more than replacing the destroyed bearings and that's how come I have a couple of Makita planers that I don't need.
Once in a while I feel obligated to have a go with the thing but I don't understand electric planers at all. Their purpose appears to be the ability to remove a lot of wood quickly when a length of timber needs dressing down to size. But if that's the case, why not just cut the piece properly down to size on the bench saw and clean up the saw cut with an ordinary hand plane?
Recently I needed to bevel a few lengths of one metre long by 45mm thick pine. I tried the Makita planer again but gave it up because I could do it faster, easier and more accurately using my old Stanley Bailey.
Half the world is probably using power planers without problems but they don't work for me so I reckon these electric jobs are going back into the rubbish bin, where they belong.

 

[clogs]

I have a good few elec planers I've picked up over the years with w/shop clear outs....
I have that only does really horrible knotty wood, one for the like of pallet wood......
and one for best....luckily they all use the same carbide blades...
I buy them in lots of 20.....
for shall we say finer work I just set the adjustment a low as poss and it's a whizz to use......
nothing I do is that super important....
Oh, I find the heavy one best for the lighter work...

 

[Just4Fun]

I just set the adjustment a low as poss

I have never used an electric planer so I am curious: how easy is it to dial in a very thin cut depth? Compared to a typical hand plane I mean. From what I have read I get the impression that electric planers are best reserved for rough work. Is that true?

 

[Sideways]

You can take 3mm off the width of a door in a single swipe with an electric plane.
It's a bit harder to manhandle the same door over a small tablesaw.
When you add in clean up time from the planer, both methods must take about the same time !

 

[Inspector]

I have a planer/jointer, planer/thicknesser to most of you that is a side by side type rather than an over under. A 6" jointer beside the 12" planer. One of the ways I work a wider board than the jointer can handle is to remove the porkchop guard and carefully run the board down the jointer. That leaves me with a smooth face for 6" and a step up to the rough unjointed part. I then use the electric planer (you were wondering when I would get to the electric planer stuff) to remove the rough wood by raising the front so it doesn't touch the wood and the back half on the smooth wood. With the electric plane skewed I can run it down the length and make the board flat enough to thickness. The same can be done with a hand plane but it takes longer. It is in many instances quicker that playing with sleds to hold a rough board to thickness. Don't forget to put that porkchop back on.

The electric plane also shines when wood turning to flatten a chunk of log to attach a faceplate to.

It also useful when building a deck or floor and you have a joist that has a lot of crown. A few careful passes levels it to its companions.

Like a reciprocating saw they are not a fine cabinetmakers tool but they fill a niche in my shop.

Pete

 

[Agent_zed]

Neighbour gave me an electric hand plane and after trying it a few times it's sat in it's box somewhere in my garage. Perhaps Im not using it properly but find it so much better just to use my proper woodplane, also a lot quieter

 

[D_W]

I like the idea of one in theory, but don't have a good one.

here's why. If you get something large that you need to take significant thickness off of, said item can be large enough that it will cause serious back strain to plane it (think something 30" wide or more).

it's also easier to take material off of something like that (table top, slab, whatever) than it is to move the item to the rare tool that would handle it running across or through.

The other option with back in mind and hand tools is to actually get up on whatever is being worked, which is also tiring.

Many of the original types here were obviously aimed at worksites because they had a fence on them - I think even stanley made one. They'd have been dandy on a commercial worksite with a bunch of doors to fit

I do have a cheap one that's capable of removing wood, but it will clog pretty easily if you really feed it well. And it's got a high friction aluminum sole.

Any of the better ones have a steel sole, or is that out due to rust and weight (and cost)?

 

[rogxwhit]

Isn't it obvious? It's a site tool. The electric plane is a door fitter's mate. As is an electric saw. And an electric drill ....

 

[Stuart Moffat]

I’ve had a Bosch one for a couple of decades. Not manu miles on the clock at all. I never use it in the workshop (either PT or hand planes) but do use it on the odd occasion for taking a bit of the bottom of doors when new carpet requires it.

 

[Doug71]

Mine only comes out for trimming doors and the odd scribe.

I have the Festool, it uses a kind of spiral blade which gives a great finish and is totally dust free when used with an extractor, blades are a bit pricey though.

 

[D_W]

Mine only comes out for trimming doors and the odd scribe.

I have the Festool, it uses a kind of spiral blade which gives a great finish and is totally dust free when used with an extractor, blades are a bit pricey though.

question - would it seem overwhelmed if you tried to take half an inch off of a 6x3 foot slab of hardwood?

For a hand tool worker in a shop, this would seem to be an ideal back saver. planing something even 3 feet wide to the center (final planing along the length) from each side is a real back killer.

 

[Doug71]

question - would it seem overwhelmed if you tried to take half an inch off of a 6x3 foot slab of hardwood?

For a hand tool worker in a shop, this would seem to be an ideal back saver. planing something even 3 feet wide to the center (final planing along the length) from each side is a real back killer.

The Festool I have is their smaller, lighter model, it can take off 4mm in one pass but I wouldn't want to be doing that over the full width of the blade!

I don't know if it's my technique or just the nature of the beast but whenever I try using the planer on a large area I just end up with tram lines everywhere, they don't really seem suited to planing anything wider than the blade.

It sounds like you need one of these


https://www.axminstertools.com/mafe...utm_content=1792&tagrid=54567088&glCountry=GB

 

[D_W]

The Festool I have is their smaller, lighter model, it can take off 4mm in one pass but I wouldn't want to be doing that over the full width of the blade!

I don't know if it's my technique or just the nature of the beast but whenever I try using the planer on a large area I just end up with tram lines everywhere, they don't really seem suited to planing anything wider than the blade.

It sounds like you need one of these


https://www.axminstertools.com/mafe...utm_content=1792&tagrid=54567088&glCountry=GB

Funny enough, makita makes a version of this that is just all over japan. It's reasonable used, depending on your definition, and they sell it toward americans used, so I'm guessing their 100V supply versions would just run faster on 120V.

But i think the use for those is for planing the full width of beams in one pass.

I'm already a HT user, so I don't need fast - I like the dimensioning part as much as anything else. The frustration with the cheap planer I have isn't rate, but it's just crude and clogs. As mentioned, use is rare, but I'd spring a few hundred bucks for one that worked well kind of like a hand tooler would expect (in place of a plane, especially at reach) and accurate enough to be followed by hand planes.

I vaguely recall a FWW article or someone relaying one years ago where Odate was making or instructing the making on a large ash table and using an electric planer to do the facing and initial sizing - or something like that. It caused a bunch of people to complain that he'd use one, which I found humorous. It's one of the few things to do by hand that leaves me having to push my own self up because my back gets spent for the day.

I guess in your terms, if it could take off 1.5-2mm in a pass, it'd be the bees knees for me. I mistakenly bought a foreign version thinking they were designed to do that rather than to be used to trim things. The dust port is what can't keep up with that kind of removal rate. Add a junction with a vacuum hose and a bend/radius to go around and the fein can't pull the shavings through (probably also to do with the long straws that come off of a cut like that).

 

[Ollie78]

Its a tool for speedy stock removal, mosty while on site. Get it within a mm of where it needs to be then a quick go with a block plane or a 5 1/2 for final fit.
Though judging by some if the "finished" work I have seen lately most people skip the last bit !
I find it a useful tool to have but there is a bit of a knack to them, go slower than you think.

I have a Makita one which I don`t like much, the blades are annoying to set, they are designed for slight adjustability but I much prefer the indexing on the Bosch I used to have, it had better ergonomics as well.

Ollie

 

[Bod]

Electric planer... the fastest method of making a large mess!

Bod

 

[Kittyhawk]

OK. Good responses.
To summarise, electric planers have their place in the big wide construction world, not so much in the shop. Horses for courses you might say, and I don't have a course for my two to run on.
Donation to the local Men's Shed coming up.

 

[Stevekane]

The Festool I have is their smaller, lighter model, it can take off 4mm in one pass but I wouldn't want to be doing that over the full width of the blade!

I don't know if it's my technique or just the nature of the beast but whenever I try using the planer on a large area I just end up with tram lines everywhere, they don't really seem suited to planing anything wider than the blade.

It sounds like you need one of these


https://www.axminstertools.com/mafe...utm_content=1792&tagrid=54567088&glCountry=GB

Ive got a Festool and a cheap Skil branded one and use them from time to time, but as you say, they do leave tram lines no matter how fine the cut is set, Im not a hand plane user but I believe that Scrub Planes have the corners of the blades eased to overcome this,,,or is that all something Ive just dreamt up?

 

[sometimewoodworker]

The Festool I have is their smaller, lighter model, it can take off 4mm in one pass but I wouldn't want to be doing that over the full width of the blade!

I’ve got it’s larger brother, it has no problem for a full width pass but I mostly use different tools for my work

 

[Garden Shed Projects]

I have a cheap Ryobi one that has sat in a box for a few years. I used it for only the second time last night. I used it as a scrub plane really just saved a bit of time over doing the job with a hand plane. Excellent at making a mess.

I was at Makers Central show earlier in the year and Triton had an enormouse one on their stand. Amazing bit of kit, God knows what you would use it for??

https://www.tritontools.com/en-GB/Product/Power Tools/Planers/TPL180

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

I‘ve had a Dewalt for about 15 years. Great for rough work, such as replacing porch decking that re-uses joist/framing, where an occasional nail might reside.