The Benefits of a Wood Planer For Sale

A wood planer is a versatile woodworking tool that can be used for a variety of tasks. They can help you reclaim old wood, clean up rough-sawn boards, and create custom thicknesses for your projects.

When shopping for a wood planer, it’s important to consider its power, size, and adjustment capabilities. It’s also essential to find one that can accommodate your work style and needs.

Power

The power of a wood planer for sale is essential for smoothing and shaping wood, making it easier to work with. A good electric planer will shave and shape wood like a hand plane, a belt sander and a jointer all rolled into one.

Most benchtop planers are designed to handle softwoods and domestic softer hardwoods, while industrial models can handle larger jobs with harder woods such as oak. Both are useful tools for a wide range of applications, including leveling joists and making stubborn doors close easily.

The best planers we tested have powerful motors capable of hogging off 1/16 ” of 15″-wide hard maple at the faster of two stock-feed rates, as well as handling a heftier 3/32 ” depth of cut on narrower stock (depth-of-cut limiters in the center of each machine prevent full-width cuts deeper than 3/32″) at the slower 16-feet-per-minute feed rate. These machines were also quieter than most others.

Size

A wood planer is a tool that removes large amounts of material from rough lumber. It also helps level out bowed or twisted boards and creates smooth, surface-planed stock ready for fine woodworking projects.

Some planers come with gauges that indicate how much wood will be removed with each pass. These can help you avoid taking too big a bite, which could tear out the board or result in deeper snipe.

Many planers have adjustable preset depth stops that prevent a board from being thinner than a desired thickness, a handy feature for planing multiple project parts to identical thicknesses.

Most planers generated loads of chips that made a mess if they weren’t hooked up to a dust collector or vacuum. Some models feature built-in fans that suck these chips away from the cutterhead and blow them out the 5″ dust port to keep your shop clean.

Adjustability

Planers have a variety of different settings and functions. These are based on the type of wood you want to plane and the tools that you use with it.

The adjustment of the cutters on a plane can make or break your work. A poorly adjusted plane will make it difficult to cut wood, and your work may be rougher than it should be.

Some hand planers have a mechanism that allows you to adjust the blade depth. These are easy to use and give you more control over the shavings that come off the wood.

Another type of planer is the jointer plane, which is the longest manual planing tool at 20 to 24 inches long. This tool is often used to quickly shave off thick layers of material to flatten or straighten the surface of the wood.

A compass plane is also a very useful tool for planing curves. It has a curved sole that allows you to shave convex and concave shapes, which is useful for cutting corners, removing glue lines, and trimming end grain.

Maintenance

All tools require maintenance at certain intervals, which not only enhance their efficiency but also extend their life. Similarly, the wood planer needs regular care to ensure that it functions efficiently.

The most common maintenance task on a wood planer for sale is changing the blades. Most wood planers use disposable double-edged knives that can be changed in a few simple steps.

As a rule of thumb, the planer blades should be changed about every eight months. This is especially true if you plan to use the machine for rough cuts.

In addition, you should reseal the cutter head shroud with paste wax periodically to help dissolve any resin build up that may be present. This helps prevent shavings from sticking to it and jamming up during heavy cuts.

If you’re not sure how to do this, consult your manufacturer or a professional. Most planer blades have oval-shaped bolt holes that make it easy to move them sideways a bit before tightening them again. This allows the nicks that cause raised ridges on dull blades to be corrected.