When I bought this planer I was
upgrading a few machines at one time. Because of that I was in the
mindset that I wanted to make sure I never upgraded my planer again. That
was one of the reasons I went with the 20" planer. Another reason was the
time it was taking to plane with my DW733.
Why not a lunchbox
The surface from my DW733 was great when it was great but too often I
had problems. If I took even a 1/16" bite from a wide hard wood like
purpleheart or maple it would stall, burn, snipe, or overheat. Also,
the knives dulled more quickly than they do on the Yorkie.
A main advantage of an industrial planer over an lunchbox planer is the
speed of milling. The feed speed, 16 or 20 fpm, isn't faster than
the rated feed speed on the DW733 but the fact that you can take
fewer/deeper passes makes the process a lot faster. Also, it never
overheats which gives me one less thing to worry about. I've planned 1/8"
off of 20" wide maple and 18" wide hackleberry (related to elm) and the
machine has no issues at all. It has power to spare and the DC was
perfect, although did fill up quickly.
Surface
The surface it leaves is behind is good. The 2 speed lunchbox
planers leave behind an even smoother surface but given that every surface
needs to be sanded or hand planed I'm not sure that saves me any time or
effort. And like I said above, the fact that it never stalls gives a nice
consistent surface that the DW733 couldn't manage.
Dust Collection
The dust collection is perfect. The machine has never left a
single chip behind. This was an area of concern for me because the
woodmaster video shows a ton of chips not getting collected and the users
had the same results. Other big planer owners have also told me
their DC was less that good. However, I ran 6" pipe all the way to a
6" to 5" adapter on the dust hood and it leaves no room for improvement.
Why the 20" planer
I'm not selling planers so you can make up your own mind here. I
wanted the 56" cast iron tables to absorb vibration. The woodmaster is
supposed to have big vibration issues based on the reviews on
woodweb and cast iron absorbs
vibration. Also, I can use it as a mini-wide belt sander to plane up
panels. Finally, I had been using a lot of boards between 15" and 20" at
the time of purchase so being able to plane them before ripping them down
seemed like a nice feature. On the downside it's about 40" wide from
power switch to the tip of the height adjustment wheel. That's a lot
of space. Also, upgrading to a bryd head down the road will be more
expensive.
Adjustments
The machine came with the infeed table out of adjustment. This
bothered me. Fixing the adjustment is easy to do now that I know what I'm
doing but that wasn't the case the first time. The instructions
don't really explain the process but they do provide a diagram of how all
the pieces relate so it's not too hard to figure it out yourself.
Aside from removing more parts than I needed to I made it through just
fine. Hopefully in time the fact that it arrived out of adjustment
will be a distant memory amongst years of good service.
Motor over or under?
In my mind a planer with the under the table motor is the only way to
go, unless you find a super discount on the "motor on top" style.
1) Gravity is on your side. With a motor on top style the
tables stay where they are and the motor moves up and down. When the
wood presses up on the motor it can rise up it's backlash and snipe.
(Some planers have a lock to help with this.) When the tables move gravity
keeps them at the bottom of their backlash already. When the wood
tries to press them down it doesn't work.
2) It's easier to get to the knives. With the motor on top of
the planer you have something else in the way as you work to get to the
knives. With the "under" style, you just unbolt the dust hood and
you're there.
3) You can slide the wood back on the top rollers for the next feed.
This is especially nice when you have two people.
I can't think of any advantages of the motor on top arrangement other than
the ability to build shop made infeed and outfeed tables because they
don't change in height. However, the 56" tables on this planer don't
require them.
