Dewalt Planers
Spending the majority of his adult life as an accomplished photographer, Matt now owns and operates Kent Made LLC with his father, Richard. Specializing in custom stair installations and fine trim carpentry, Matt spends most of his time either in front of a saw blade or behind a finish nail gun. With any planer, one hopes for a powerful, accurate machine. At 92lbs, we’re not sure we would lug it around to a project site, but it’s a welcome addition in the shop. Regardless of your planer’s horsepower rating, be sure to choose one with a 15-amp motor.
One Allen wrench is used to remove the top planer cover, dust cover and the blade bolts. Changing the blades literally only takes about 15 minutes and I found it to be really easy. In the image above you can see one of the blades and the bolts that hold it in place.
During this test, we set each planer to its maximum depth of cut – usually 3/32 inch. We ran four species of wood through the planers and recorded the time for the cut and the amperage profile for each cut. Our team set up a FLUKE 3001 FC recording ammeter that measured values on a one second interval and sent the data via wireless link to our computer for later analysis. To do this, we dewalt accessories adjusted each planers depth until it contacted the wood but had not reached the depth where the cutter blades hit the wood. This allowed us to visually time the 45″ section as it passed by a reference point on the planer. For each planer, we ran this test three times and used the average of these times for a comparison between the no-load and fully loaded feed rates of each machine.
Tag this product with a keyword to better identify it and relate it to similar products. I’ve heard of the sprockets messing up on the older dewalt Hand toolss. On mine I had a feed problem and used simple green to clean the feed roller and the amount of gunk that came off was shocking. Had the planer powered on, the plan was to immediately shutoff and replace circuit breaker.
The planer generates a lot of large shavings, and a vac will fill up fast! Without a vacuum attached, the dust-hood exhaust port shoots out a very large debris field to clean up. With an aggressive cut, shavings can quickly clog the port. We are experimenting with a cyclonic dust collector with 5-gallon waste bucket, and have had positive results so far, even with mismatched hoses. The handle is ergonomically designed and easy to grasp. You even get a kickstand so you can rest the planer on the work surface without damaging the material.
On both sides of the small belt pulley are some set screws. With an allen wrench loosen them and you’ll be able to remove the brush holders. And that’s just turning the knob about an inch, so no huge passes being made.
When I recently added a melamine board so that I could plane a thin board. So in my case, using the factory bed, I get very little, or no snipe. One thing, for short boards, do no touch the board on the outfeed end until it is fully through the cutters and rollers. If you reach for the board before it clears the cutters, you tend to lift it slightly, which will result in some snipe.