potable planers

[Walt Kenny]

I'm looking at buying a portable planer (my first) and have been looking at some reviews that I found on Fine Woodworking website and one thing I don't find mentioned anywhere is, what is the shortest board that you can plane. If someone that has a portable planer can let me know I would greatly appreciate it Thanks

[Fred Voorhees]

Walt, generally anything less than a foot is fairly dangerous. To be honest, I think the minimum for my Dewalt planer is 15 inches.

[Bill Huber]

I have a Ridgid and the shortest you can plan is 12 inches.

[Prashun Patel]

I tried to plane 6" pieces on my DW735 and it was not pretty.
You're much better off planing first, then xcutting to final length.

That being said, really long boards are a PITA to plane because of the massive infeed and outfeed support required. I like to just cut my pieces about 6" to 1ft longer than necessary before feeding thru the planer. This avoids snipe and 'dipping' at the beginning and ending.

[Paul Dell'Anno]

I have the newer Ridgid. It is my first planer so I do not have much experience with it, but I would be hesitant to run anything under 12" long.

[Rob Young]

I just recently invested $190 in a Sunhill Machinery SM-344 12-1/2 planer. It's 13" cousin was reviewed in Fine Woodworking. The only difference I can find between the two looking at the manuals (available online) is that the 13" is, well 13" and has a cutter head lock of sorts. It isn't clear to me how it works looking at the exploded drawing in the manual.

All of that said, after a little bit of adjusting I have run 13" stock through the SM-344 and had less than 0.005" snipe, maybe 0.003" which is pretty much what I would say the limit is for my lash-up measuring system. I believe the manual says 12" is the lower limit. And in my case, that 13" piece is 3 1/2" wide.

The longest I have run through is around 60". Any longer than that and you really need to think about infeed and outfeed support.

The cutter can be adjusted for parallelism to the bed and it happened that mine was fine, again less than 0.005" difference. I know some of my posts sound like comercials but heck, I think I did pretty good for the money and the low volume of material I'll be running. Maybe 50BF so far and a mix of pine (kinda fun to make stuff from 2x6 #2 crap), cherry, walnut and QWSO. It is necessary to clean things after the craptacular pine though.

[Sonny Edmonds]

DW 735 - 12" (http://www.amazon.com/DEWALT-DW735-13-Inch-Benchtop-Planer/dp/tech-data/B0000CCXU8/ref=de_a_smtd)

Makita 2012NB - 12" (http://www.amazon.com/Makita-2012NB-12-Inch-Benchtop-120-Volt/dp/tech-data/B000051ZOO/ref=de_a_smtd)

Grizzly (http://www.amazon.com/Grizzly-G0505-12-1-2%2522-Planer/dp/B0000DD08N/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1233200065&sr=8-2) just does not want to talk about it.
Metabo DH316 (http://www.amazon.com/Metabo-4-Inch-Portable-Thickness-Planer/dp/B000JJGZKQ/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1233200065&sr=8-14) doesn't either
Delta didn't either.

And that's about as much shopping as I want to do for you.
Get a DW735 if you want a great portable planer. But mount it on a stand, or a permanent location. It'll bust your b___'s picking it up at nearly 90 pounds. :)

[Paul Demetropoulos]

Another vote for the DW735, it is heavy though as Sonny said, and loud, which he didn't.

You can always plane short or thin stock using some sort of carrier. For instance, you could take a 12" piece and attach two 18" sticks, runners so to speak , with hot melt glue,or brads or carpet tape or gum. Ok, not gum.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Hello,

For instance, you could take a 12" piece and attach two 18" sticks, runners so to speak , with hot melt glue,or brads or carpet tape or gum

One of the few things I remember from High School shop (~ 1966), was using such runners attached to the sides of short stock.
We were warned that anything shorter than the distace between the in and out feed rollers would become trapped inside and nasty things would happen.

Somebody ignored the warning and sent a small breadboard through.
Like Shawn said above - not pretty.

Anyhow - we used regular white Elmer's glue with a piece of newspaper in the glue line. After planning, a chisel easily prys the joint apart and the newspaper/glue cleans off with warm water and and some elbow grease.

[Anthony Whitesell]

I have the Delta 22-560 (an older model and predecessor to the TP400) and the shortest for that planer is 14". One reason I bought a Jet 16/32 drum sander. The shortest for the sander is 2 1/2 inches.

[Walt Kenny]

Thanks a lot everyone. In my own thinking the distance from the infeed to outfeed table with a little extra to account for snipe would be just about all I would want to try.

Walt

[Michael McCoy]

I have the DW735 and don't have any problem with relatively long stock. I just finished some bed rails (75") out of 8/4 stock dimensioned to 1 1/2" x 6" wide. I did take some care with infeed/outfeed support plus I was at both ends to help support.

[Craig Hemsath]

Potable planers? Not to judge another man's preference, but I'd prefer to drink a Miller Lite or two and keep my planer on the workbench.:)

[Howard Miller]

I have the DW735 and really like it. I was in Lowes yesterday and they had the DW734 on clearance for ~399.00. Check your Lowes - if they have it you might be able to negotiate better price.

[Greg Cole]

Potable??? Must be one thirsty guy.:p

I have one of the older Rigid TP1300LS's. I can't say anything bad about it, had it for 3+ years and run a fair amount of stock through it as I buy most of my lumber rough cut. It's been a good little apprentice & leaves a nice finish for a 2 blade cutter.
All lunchbox style planers are lound and will bog a little if you're hogging on wider stock.