Which Planer/thicknesser is the best for Startup?

[sitefive]

Want to take my woodworks to next level, so far my only 2 real tools have been a really good handsaw and a powersander, I have bosch miter saw as well but it can't cut wide/thick enough boards I need so a regular handsaw does the trick before I save up some more $ and buy better.
So far I have been just trying to buy as straight as possible boards and sanding the $hit out of them but it takes sooooooo much time and effort and the end result still isn't the best ,and I have to spend much more cash as well to buy those perfect boards and it takes time finding them as well...

I thought I would just wait for an good ebay deal and get a Makita 2012nb Planer/thicknesser but I found this forum and now Realized that the Makita 2012nb is Just a thicknesser and I need to get planner as well, is it really true?
I needed something which will get uneven/not perfect rough sawn timber all straight and shiny , I really don't care that much about thicknesing them to the exact mm at this stage but I do need the planning part where I can take regular timber and make it perfectly straight and even ready to be used for furniture making I thought that the Makita 2012nb does that since Its obviously called a Planer but now got confused..
My Max max max budget is around ~500-600quid for a used 240v unit , I would rather buy higher quality used stuff than Brand new cheaper stuff , since I don't really want to buy cheap and buy twice.



Btw one more question, are these manual miter saws any good?
With just my handsaw I can saw pretty straight lanes but still sometimes they come out not 100% perfect, The good miter saws which can saw the 10cm+ thick beams in one go are bloody expensive and not in the budget as for now when I can still make do with just doing it manually :roll:

 

[pcb1962]

I really don't care that much about thicknesing them to the exact mm at this stage but I do need the planning part where I can take regular timber and make it perfectly straight and even ready to be used for furniture making I thought that the Makita 2012nb does that since Its obviously called a Planer but now got confused

Your confusion is understandable. In the UK the Planer is the top part of a P/T and the Thicknesser is underneath. In the US however, the Planer is called a Jointer and the Thicknesser is called a Planer. So our Planer/Thicknesser becomes a Jointer/Planer. Hope this clarifies

 

[deema]

If you haven't already I would initially buy a really good hand plane or two and get to know how to plane wood before embarking on a P/T. There is another live thread at the mo. about hand planes on which there are different views and good advise. The reason for making this suggestion rather than suggesting a P/T is that once you have mastered the hand plane and understand how to get wood straight and flat, using and deciding on which P/T becomes a lot easier. (Unless there is someone who can help you with using a P/T).

With a hand plane and a simple jig you can easily refine your hand sawn mitre joints to achieve a perfect fit. It's a fairly easy skill to acquire and the jig (shooting board) will be one of the most used jigs you will ever have. There are really good uTube videos on how to make them. Paul Sellers has a really good one, and is recognised as a superb contributor of quality training material.

 

[Mike Vastano]

I am nearly in the same boat as the OP I would like a planer/Thicknesser but cant justify at the moment. The options seem to be

The generic Few :- All available from Screwfix all about the same spec and all about the same price Range of £200 - £300 these seem cheap and cheerful but may not be up to the job.

The slightly Higher Few :- I am thinking along the lines of Metabo here not many online reviews etc so ghard to gauge if they are worth the extra cash

Top End stuff :- Obviously we would all like one but price and space are a problem

Like to hear other POV

 

[RogerP]

Forget the cheaper P/T or thicknessers with a brush motor.

Get one with "260" in the name and an induction motor - here's one from Record http://scosarg.com/record-power-pt260-10-x6-planer-thicknesser.html but the same thing comes in various guises re-badged by several firms.

I've had one for many years and it's done a huge amount of work and still works faultlessly.

 

[dzj]

As deema says, "a really good hand plane or two" is a good way to go.
You'll be surprised how effective these things are when sharp.
Otherwise I'd look into buying a second hand cast iron planer. With a little 'elbow grease' you
will have a much better machine than those made nowadays.

edited:

This looks like a sensible machine to buy:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/startrite-sd3 ... 1604959469

It might not be in your area, but if you shop around such machines pop up eventually.

 

[RobinBHM]

Forget the cheaper P/T or thicknessers with a brush motor.

Get one with "260" in the name and an induction motor - here's one from Record http://scosarg.com/record-power-pt260-10-x6-planer-thicknesser.html but the same thing comes in various guises re-badged by several firms.

I've had one for many years and it's done a huge amount of work and still works faultlessly.

+1 I once had a electra beckum 260 with aluminium tables. It wasnt perfect, the beds werent quite flat and the fence flexed a bit, but it was a very competent performer overall and certainly capable of machining hardwood to clean, square sections for fine quality cabinetwork.

 

[RogerP]

Some 260's have cast iron tables. Seems they come in all sorts of configurations.

 

[Rhossydd]

I really don't care that much about thicknesing them to the exact mm at this stage

You will as soon as you start joining timber together.

As Roger says the '260's are a good bet, but there's also a lot of affordable s/h machines on offer through eBay. Ensure that you can source spare blades for any machine though and assume you'll have to buy a spare set. Chances are a s/h machine will need it's blades sharpening and that can take a couple of weeks, so it's best top have a spare set ready to go.

You'll also need to budget for a chip extractor. Without one you'll be having to stop to clear out the machine every few minutes.

 

[sitefive]

By handplane do you mean the electric planer which you hold In hand or the manual thing ? I have a really cheap non-brand electric handplaner, but the thing is, the blade was like 8cm wide and I need it for 20-25cm wide boards where the finish must be tip-top, already tried with that thing ,however I only messed up the material since it leaves marks as you can't plane it in 1 go, for smaller stuff yeah its fine

Really that Makita 2012nb is useless for actual Planing work to make the material nice and square?
Those really huge planers you guys showed me are in my budget for an used one, but they are damn huuuuuuuuge and heavy, since I don't even have a workshop where to put it, everything I do is in spare room in house

 

[JakeS]

Without one you'll be having to stop to clear out the machine every few minutes.

Where by "few minutes" he means "twenty seconds".

By coincidence, I just bought one of the various 260/induction-motor P/Ts second-hand this weekend; to make sure it was all working I flattened a 40cm length of sycamore, and during the third pass on the planer it was already kicking chips upward as the blades span around 'cause the dust port was full and jammed. (I was just too lazy to hook the extractor up for the quick test I was giving it.)

Unexpected bonus: compared to the tiny shreds that came out of the little benchtop model I previously owned, the chips this makes are nice long rolled-up shavings, far better for starting the barbecue. ;-)

 

[dzj]

By handplane do you mean the electric planer which you hold In hand or the manual thing ? I have a really cheap non-brand electric handplaner, but the thing is, the blade was like 8cm wide and I need it for 20-25cm wide boards where the finish must be tip-top, already tried with that thing ,however I only messed up the material since it leaves marks as you can't plane it in 1 go, for smaller stuff yeah its fine

Really that Makita 2012nb is useless for actual Planing work to make the material nice and square?
Those really huge planers you guys showed me are in my budget for an used one, but they are damn huuuuuuuuge and heavy, since I don't even have a workshop where to put it, everything I do is in spare room in house

The manual thing.
If you lack a workshop, then I'd go for a combination of hand planes (to get one surface flat) and then
run it through a small thicknesser, like the Makita or some other brand.

 

[Zeddedhed]

For what it's worth here's my contribution:

My 2 year old P/T ( a Hammer A3260) recently started giving dodgy results.

To keep work going I broke out the hand planes and discovered something remarkable - hand planing ain't that hard.

I now know that I'm not dependent on my machines (although i can't wait for it to be fixed) and it's sooooooo nice to not have the noise and dust and fear that goes with high rev motors and dust extractors.

Learn to plane by hand is my advice. Maybe a thicknesser for after face and edge have been established.

 

[sitefive]

I always thought that the hand planes are just something ancient when they didnt had anything better and is nightmare to use and doesnt produce good finish on wide boards, don't they leave marks on the timber since the blade is small?
Maybe someone has some link to some good handplanes with which I could start? Have no idea what to look for,and I see there are lots of cheap chinese junk which I don't really want.

 

[JakeS]

I always thought that the hand planes are just something ancient when they didnt had anything better and is nightmare to use and doesnt produce good finish on wide boards, don't they leave marks on the timber since the blade is small?

This is all true, until you learn how to set them up and use them properly. It's not a straightforward get-tool-out-of-box-and-start-using thing, but it's worth it in the long run.

 

[deema]

Have a look at the thread which is live

which-planer-thicknesser-is-the-best-for-startup-t90509.html

If you don't have one at the moment, your very first project should be to build yourself a workbench with a nice flat surface. The two ingredients for success are
1. A nicely setup / or high quality hand plane.
2. A flat surface that doesn't move and allows you to clamp or by use of stops cleat the wood when planing it.

To convert wood quickly you need as a minimum a scrub plane, (cheap no 4 or 5 with the mouth wide open and a heavily cambered plane. Plenty of uTube videos on how to setup the plane as a scrub and how to use it) and a No 5 1/2. For small projects it's often quicker and safer to use hand planes than it is a P/T. You can't safely run short stuff over a planner without having a lucky rabbits foot clutched in one hand.

 

[Mike Vastano]

Have a look at the thread which is live

which-planer-thicknesser-is-the-best-for-startup-t90509.html

If you don't have one at the moment, your very first project should be to build yourself a workbench with a nice flat surface. The two ingredients for success are
1. A nicely setup / or high quality hand plane.
2. A flat surface that doesn't move and allows you to clamp or by use of stops cleat the wood when planing it.

To convert wood quickly you need as a minimum a scrub plane, (cheap no 4 or 5 with the mouth wide open and a heavily cambered plane. Plenty of uTube videos on how to setup the plane as a scrub and how to use it) and a No 5 1/2. For small projects it's often quicker and safer to use hand planes than it is a P/T. You can't safely run short stuff over a planner without having a lucky rabbits foot clutched in one hand.

You seem to have posted a link to its own thread :shock:

 

[HexusOdy]

Personally I went for separates to save the hassle of having to reconfigure the machine from planer to thicknesser. I picked up a generic 6" jointer/planer off Gumtree for £150 (they are all identical pretty much. All from the same Chinese factories, 1hp induction motors). Mine looks identical to this except without the raised NVR.

https://www.grizzly.com/products/6-Jointer/G0452

And I picked up a 2nd hand Ryobi 13" thicknesser for £80 off Fleabay. They all have brush motors but thats no big deal. Again if you look at most thicknessers they all look identical and have identical spec except Dewalts.

The problem with a combined PT is your thinknessing width is limited to 6" same as the planer bed because they use the same cutter head. Which makes sense as their logic is if you canonly plane 6" you only need to thickness 6". But often Ive needed to plain wider boards that are already cut to rough thickness where perfect thickness isn't required. So can plane them easily through the thicknesser. Or there are some jigs you can knock up to allow you to joint wide boards on a thicknesser.

Also we need to agree on an acceptable abbreviation for thicknesser because typing it over and over is a PITA. I suggest thknsr

 

[Sneaky Pete]

Forget the cheaper P/T or thicknessers with a brush motor.

Get one with "260" in the name and an induction motor - here's one from Record http://scosarg.com/record-power-pt260-10-x6-planer-thicknesser.html but the same thing comes in various guises re-badged by several firms.

I've had one for many years and it's done a huge amount of work and still works faultlessly.

With the 1100 long bed how do you find it for getting longer lengths straight ? I have a kitty bestcombi but am looking at getting separates as getting anything over 6’ straight with the planer is hard work !

 

[johnnyb]

I would say find a better place to buy your timber planed all round.
make stuff from it. it's a basic to be able to produce 4 square timber in any size. but depending on what your making you can get by. hand planes are OK but just familiarise yourself with them 4 now.
I can buy redwood pine par in various sizes that are pretty straight. sometimes cheap planer thicknesser can be frustrating in there ability to flatten and square/ thickness.