I have been looking to upgrade my thickness planer for a couple of months now, and fortunately for me there have been a number of new models on the market and some nice new features.

I looked at the Grizzly 15″ (G1021X and G0453), the General 30-115 and 30-125, and the Powermatic 15S, which is eventually what I selected. First a couple of words on why I went with the Powermatic.

The Grizzly extreme is a lot of $$ and while it has a number of very nice features I am not sold in their spiral indexed cutterhead. The G0453 grizzly is priced attractively and for another $800 I could buy the Byrd shelix cutterhead and a nice setup. The one thing I didn’t understand is why the low end Grizzly has a mobile base built in, but the expensive one doesn’t. I just haven’t been impressed with Grizzly quality, and I am well aware that they have some die-hard fans and alot of happy customers so I’d rather not get into it any more than this.

The General machines are nice, but the 30-115 has an overhead motor and I dislike this setup because of the hassle of changing knives and adjusting the machine. The 30-125 is a step up but without the spiral cutterhead, and priced premium.

The Powermatic 15S has been getting great reviews, has a built in mobile base, a spiral cutterhead, great fit-and-finish, and like all the other machines it has cast iron table extensions (I hate those roller setups, ever get your finger caught in between one of those rollers and a board?).

The spiral cutterhead on the Powermatic is something new for me and I had a lot of questions about it that I couldn’t get any answer on, like how long the disposable knives last. In the end I took a leap of faith on the cutterhead issue thinking that if it doesn’t work out I can swap in an indexible insert head, like the Byrd. The spiral cutterhead looks like it is easy to deal with for changing the knives, the gibs are set with a couple of pins, but I’ll hold off on forming an opinion until I see how long the knives last and how easy they are to change.

Now on to the impressions I have after receiving the machine, setting it up, and running some boards through it.

– the fit and finish is top notch, very well put together machine. I also appreciate them using machine oil on the exposed surfaces instead of that dreaded cosmoline crap. Easy cleanup.
– kudos to the engineer who thought up the retractable lifting bars built into the base, very handy for getting the machine up and out of the crate.
– documentation is clear and well written, explaining every adjustment you can make in good detail.
– speaking of adjustments, there is a lot of tweaking that you can do to add/decrease roller pressure, line up the table (parallel the table and easy adjustments on the extensions).
– a small point, but all of the tools you need to assemble and maintain the machine are included. I like this because I can throw ’em in a ziplock back and always know I have everything at hand to do what needs to be done.
– no plug, which is standard for these machines but c’mon, you are paying a lot of $$ so is it really that big of a deal to put a plug on the cord and if the customer needs a different kind of wants to hardwire it then they can cut it off. Delta puts plugs on their machines, you don’t hear anyone complaining about getting a plug with their Unisaw.
– 2 speeds, although the fast speed (20 fpm) gives you a finish that like glass, I couldn’t tell the diff with the slow speed (16 fpm).
– The table rollers can be raised or lowered, however it would be a lot better if they put an indexible cam adjustor on these roller to make it easier).
– the infeed roller is an impressively machine spiral serrated piece, definitely grabs the work piece with conviction.
– The dust collection works great, very little is not caught up in the chute, however the dust collector chute is offset to the left… in my shop it would work better to go right, so perhaps they should offer this or just give you a straight on to split the difference.
– the casters don’t have an adjustor, as far as I can tell, and on my machine one of the casters seems a little out of adjustment. I need to check into this a little more and maybe give them a call. Also, the locking mechanism doesn’t fully lock the casters, need to look into how, if, that can be adjusted.
– this machine is super quiet, I couldn’t believe how smoothly and quietly it runs
– the anti-kickback fingers are huge, nice safety feature
– the digital depth adjustor is a nice gadget, and a complete mystery to me at this point… it’s a good thing they kept the analog system in place. It’s kind of weird I guess, but I’d rather they have put a dial caliper on the depth adjustor instead of digital… but that’s just preference I guess.
– stock return rollers are big and very smooth.
– the mag switch is located in a position that makes one of the table lock knobs kind of awkward, that swith would be better located about 3 inches up and I may rewire it to relocate the switch on a column or something.

Lastly and most importantly, the surface this machine leaves if phenomenal. There is a minor amount of snipe, but I think I can get the last bit out with a little more tweaking on the roller and table ajustments. This machine is not cheap for the 15″ planer category, but I have to say at this point that I have no regrets about spending over my budget for the Powermatic.