Has FWW ever done a review on electric hand planes?
Recently, I purchased a DeWalt 735 for planing boards. Very happy with. To date, I’ve been jointing and thicknessing boards by hand and often starting with S3S material to make life easy for me as I don’t own a jointer.
I can joint a board, remove twist, etc by hand. It’s not technically all that difficult per se, just time consuming. I was thinking that rather than spend significant money on a big jointer (or likely a big jointer planer combo), I might just purchase an electric hand jointer as an in between step between a floor machine and a hand plane. I can’t find any reviews by FWW. Do you know if they have ever reviewed them? Do you have any experience with electric hand jointers and which ones to consider or avoid?
I am aware of how one could use a sheet good, shims, and hot glue sticks to have the planer double as a jointer. Many thanks for the feedback.
Replies
I'm not sure if Fine Woodworking has reviewed them -- I doubt it -- but I'd bet money that Fine Homebuilding has.
Good point.
I have a craftsmn power plane bought in 1990. I bought it to taper some table legs well before I had even a rudimentary shop. After that project I never tried "fine" work with it again.
I have ued it many times to straighten wall studs and deck joists in place and I love it for that. It is a huge stretch to refer to it as a hand jointer.
I suppose if I had a board with significant twist that I intended to procees by hand I would appreciate the power assist for the opening round.. but it is NOT a finishing tool.
This type of work requires a true hand plane. I bought a Stanley #7 (type 15--1931) on ebay for $130 and put a 01 hock iron in it. It can flatten table tops! I have a 735 and a 6" Jet jointer...
But when I want to flatten a piece that is greater than 6" I go to the hand plane.
The other solution is build a sled for the 735...you then place the board on the bed and shim it so it has no wobble...run the wood and sled through the 735. When the top is flat, then remove the sled, flip the board over and run it through again. You now will have 2 surfaces parallel to each other. Google "planer sleds" and. you will see how to make one. I used melamine for the sled--works great.
To square the edges you can place the wood in a vice and then joint the edge with the #7 hand plane. Then rip the other edge on a table saw to joint the other edge.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woodworking project that called for the use of an electric hand planer.
Just to be clear, I'm thinking of boards with big twist or cupping or bows. The electric planer would be just to do most of the work. Then, I would use a normal hand plane to finish it off. The electric planer would not be the last tool used on the wood.
Cupping is no big deal. Run it through the 735 cup side down at first. It will flatten it right down.
For a little twist, cut to slightly over length which reduces some of the twist. A few swipes with a jack plane can take out the rest, then start it through the 735.
If the board has too much twist, don't buy it. If it twisted that much after the sawmill, it might twist more down the road. Let someone else deal with it.
You do have a good point John c2. I could well be overthinking this.
I bought a Makita power planer maybe 40 odd years ago. With practice you can get pretty good with it and can also do a lot of damage if your not paying a lot of attention. It dissappears for long periods of time and reappears at certain times when I have a use for it. I've used it to join boards effectively, beveled the edges of doors ,things like that. Away from the shop on installs there were many times it saved the day. As a near to finish surface planer well not so good or at least not easy, I decided that the possibility of causing severe damage to the board if you blew it outweighed any advantage. It's easy to screw up with one of those. But as a scrub plane it's hard to beat. I have a pretty good stack of ancient French white oak from wine barrels. It's misshapen ,has lots of surface damage, fissures ,dowel holes and just general filth. It's coopered curved almost 3 " thick boards. When you get through all of that there is some beautiful stuff in there. You don't want to run it through a planer or a jointer unless your willing to sacrifice a set of knives and possibly a bearing or two. A handplane would take forever but I recently decided to clean up the whole stack, at least enough to get an idea of what I have. I was able to clean up the whole stack in a couple of hours with the power plane. It would have taken me a least a couple of days with a hand plane and a very sore arm!
My main supplier for redwood(RIP) for years and years had a set up of a contractor size old Rockwell table saw ,a circular saw and a 6" power planer. That was all he used,his whole tool kit, and he was a wizard with that planer! Can't properly surface a board with a powerplaner?
Over the years I must have bought 10s of thousands of feet of redwood boards from him -all perfectly square and flat and dimensionally parallel. So, all things are possible. You couldnt see the dust in his shop for the dust and thats what eventually killed him ...sequoiaosis! The medical profession might have made up that name just for him!
My great uncle (ca 1900 to 1984) had a relatively simple set of tools and did amazing work. The front yard fence, gate, and metalwork (all done by him) was featured in Better Home and Gardens (ca. 1950s).
As I get older (69 now) I've become increasingly lazy about moving white oak and ash lumber that I've had drying down the hill in our barn up to my garage workshop. The lumber has been down there long enough that it is not easy to make out the grain pattern, so I hate to haul it up to joint/plane it only to find out I don't like a particular board. So, I have been eyeing a Triton TPL180B - 7" Triple Blade Planer to use down at the barn to help me select the pieces I want. I'm not planning on jointing the boards with it, but I suppose I could do that. The only thing holding me back is the $300+ price tag. Perhaps I'll just stick to my jack plane.
There are some at a much lower price point. Trying to find out if for my potential purpose if they would all be adequate as I'm just looking to get quickly to where I need to be.
There is also that used one on Craigslist. People buy things like that don't use them much and eventually sell them. Under $100 shouldn't be too hard and maybe for as low as $20.
I use a Bosch Power planer from time to time. It can be handy to help remove large amounts of material on something that is too wide for my planer. The one I have was about $100, including the fence attachment for trimming doors. Reasonable price and nice to have when I need it, but it rarely my go to tool.
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