Mother's Thickness Planer Survey

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Put another way, a thickness planer will make both sides of a slab of wood smooth and parallel to each other, but it won't necessarily make them straight. That task must be left to a jointer, which prepares face sides and edges by removing high spots without first flattening the board; ideally, a jointer would be used prior to planing to guarantee one square side . . . though often at the cost of a considerable amount of stock on a badly warped board.

KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Surprisingly enough, all planers function in essentially the same manner. But the differences that do exist among the manufacturer's dozen or so offerings are significant enough to warrant a close inspection prior to making a purchase. Too, some machines are marketed under more than one brand name, and some distributors make their own modifications to a manufacturer's product . . . so be aware of these factors while comparative shopping.

One feature that's a traditional mainstay of commercial shop planers is sheer mass, and plenty of it. Though it'd be difficult to argue against this, more than one manufacturer leans toward portability, and thus relies upon angle steel framing or aluminum castings to reduce weight and expense. Suffice it to say that cast iron is strong, resistant to warpage, and unmatched for dampening vibration; on the other hand, liberal use of it relegates a tool to in-shop, stationary service . . . period.

It's worth noting that some manufacturers offer optional stands, while others incorporate cabinets right into the design. Again, which you choose depends upon how you plan to use your machine. Perhaps the ideal setup in terms of flexibility is one in which a substantial base is used to support a self-contained tool. That way, the business part of the machine can be separated from the stand and carried to another location, where it can be mounted or rejoined to its legs.

If you anticipate planing a large amount of long stock, you'll want to consider support beyond the boundaries of the planer table. Some manufacturers offer optional roller bed extensions or telescoping support stands; at least one utilizes a clever design whereby the table is stationary and the cutter adjusts vertically, thus eliminating height discrepancies when long boards of varying thicknesses are being worked on.

Though convenience is significant, the true measure of a planer is how well it surfaces a board, and this will depend upon a number of factors. First, the cutterhead has to rotate rapidly enough to make a clean slice; its speed is contingent upon the number of blades employed, because the ultimate goal is to achieve a working rate of about 13,000 cuts per minute. Coupled closely with this, however, is the rate at which the stock is fed past the cutterhead. If it's pushed through too fast, the quality of the surface suffers. In practice, a high cutting rate matched with slow feed rate produces the smoothest surface. Last but not least, the diameter of the cutterhead itself comes into play as well. A large drum has a greater swing, which produces a shallow, and thus a smooth, cut.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print