Considering a Woodmaster 725, your thoughts.

[Shawn Morley]

First off, I'm really glad I finally found a good wood working forum, the wife isn't thrilled but I love it, great site.

So I'm strongly considering a Woodmaster 725, I was very skeptical of these machines for many reasons but I just can't find many bad things said about them and the price comparable to what else is out there is great. I was planning on getting everything but the sanding head as I have a widebelt and would probably never use the sand on the Woodmaster. I am also going to order it with the spiral head on it.

My question to you is, is there another tool out there that I should be looking at that is comparable to this one for what it can do? If not, are there any nuances with this machine that I should know about?

Thanks for any help.
Shawn

[Neal Clayton]

i have a 718.

my opinions...

1) as a short run molding machine, it's pretty decent. takes some trial and error to determine proper feed rates for various species, but once you get the hang of it, it works ok.

2) it will snipe some while planing, outside of setting up perfectly height adjusted support on the outfeed side, not a whole lot you can do about it. the rubber rollers can flex a bit and the outfeed table can flex a bit too, it's just part of the machine.

3) you need quite a bit of oomph on your dust collector, there's not as much clearance around the head as there are in other planers so the shavings sometimes struggle to get out to the hose. might only be an issue on the 718.

4) no problems at all using it as a power fed router, if you are planning on using the router attachment. that has worked perfectly for me without much fiddling.

5) gang ripping works fine as well, but not like a true gang rip saw. you can't feed rough lumber into it, you do need to surface the two faces and square up one edge, since it only has the rubber rollers and a board screwed down as a fence to stop it from walking. i use a 16 foot length of angle iron and a skilsaw to square one edge before feeding molding boards into mine, works fine.

generally i'm happy with mine. i don't use the gang rip and molding heads alot, but i have used them enough to create molding for my house. as an every day planer it's good enough for me, as long as the ~4 inches of snipe doesn't bother you much it'll be fine for that. alot of people seem to struggle to get good planing results with the straight knives, but the spiral head fixes those issues so that won't be a concern.

i think they're a fair price for the machine you get.

[Shawn Morley]

Thanks for the input.

I have a 2hp single bag and a 3hp double bag. Do you think the 2hp will be enough for it?

[Brian Coe]

I have a 725. Neal's comments above are spot on. I can't confirm or deny the gang saw application, as I have not used it for that. I did a lot of research too before purchasing, and it seemed that it got OK reviews as a planer, OK as a sander, and very good as a molder. Once the knives were adjusted, the cut quality is about as good as any other 15" to 20" planer I have worked with. I'd like to know how well the spiral head works, as I have considered that upgrade. The woodmasters do seem to snipe some no matter what, so that is something to deal with. I played with the adjustments on mine until I got something that I can live with, usually solved with a couple of passes with a hand plane, or leave the board a little longer if possible. I built a custom bed for mine out of plywood and topped with a slick plastic sheet like the one you can order with the machine. This replaced the extensions on mine, which I couldn't get aligned well enough to suit me. The machine is not the heaviest in the world, due to lots of sheet construction and limited cast iron. Vibration has been an issue for some users. There was a thread on here recently about that, and various ways user had tuned their machines to lessen vibrations. The nice thing about them is that they are very straightforward machines, with lots of off-the-shelf parts, and they lend themselves well to tinkering and upgrading to suit their users needs, particularly with the newer add on router and mop sanding attachments. (Don't have either one of those yet though).

Long story short, for the money it's about as good of a planer as you can get elsewhere for a similar price point, and it has the other functions too that it does reasonably well. Thus it suits many folks needs very well.

As for dust collection, I would think the 2hp could probably keep up, if you kept the hose run as short as possible. The 725 has a 6" dust port, and if at all possible you will benefit if you can avoid stepping it down to 5" or 4". I'm not really sure a 4" pipe or hose could handle the volume of chips the 725 is capable of producing or the amount of air flow needed.

Hope this helps,

Brian

[ed vitanovec]

I have the 718 and I think the fit and finish is really good. I did get some snipe when I planed some boards, all the brands of planers I have used in the past did also. I did set up the gang rip and the first time it took a bit of time in the set-up, once I let it rip it went fast. If you have a lot of boards to rip it can be done pretty fast once set-up. I have not used the drum sanding attachment since I have a large dual drum sander already. I did buy the 8" corrugated molding head and this is really nice and I would recommend it for molding. The dust collection is not that great. One thing I added was the cover hinge kit, the cover tilts out of the way to make blade or head changes. You might was to consider the hinge kit for the 25", I think my 18" cover weights about 20 lbs.

Regards!
Ed

[Shawn Morley]

The 8" head, is that the 2 knife head or a different one?

[Neal Clayton]

also, if you order the spiral head they still send you the straight knife head which you can use for molding knives instead, which i highly recommend in lieu of the smaller molding heads.

the straight knife planer head is much larger and therefore will vibrate much less.

you do have to specify to them when you order knives that you are using the planer head for molding knives, though, so that they send you the proper counterweights.

as for the usefulness of the spiral head brian, imo it's worth it if you use the planer more than a couple of days a week. no more height setting since they level and set themselves, no more sharpening since the knives are disposable, and you get alot more cutting before you need a new edge. the only maintenance is cleaning the head once every year or two, depending on how much you use it (sap and dust can get beneath the knives over time). the cut quality is also alot better since you have constant blade contact, no more ridges, just microscopic divots that are sanded away with the sanding you have to do anyways.

[Bob Falk]

I have a 718 and agree with it being a planer that snipes. I also have a Robland 12" jointer/planer combo...use it most of the time as it snipes very little, so there is obviously something about the Woodmaster infeed and outfeed rollers that allow snipe. It does work well as a molder and I have run window trim...BTW, Woodmaster was very good in producing custom knives to match historic trim. My $0.02 Bob

[Shawn Morley]

Thanks for all the info guys. I am wondering if they may have fixed some of the snipe issues with the 725. Apparently they made some changes, it used to have 4 feed rollers and the cut that to two, seemed strange to me but I was told it made a world of a difference. We'll see.

[ed vitanovec]

Yes the 8" corrugated head has 2 knives.

[James White]

Thanks for all the info guys. I am wondering if they may have fixed some of the snipe issues with the 725. Apparently they made some changes, it used to have 4 feed rollers and the cut that to two, seemed strange to me but I was told it made a world of a difference. We'll see.

I think that the rollers put so much pressure on the board that when. The in feed rollers let go the board springs back up. Same when the out feed rollers first engage. They push the board and table down causing snipe. I was able to lessen it substantially by reducing the rollers spring pressure. The only down side so far has been when feeding more than one board at a time. One of the boards may stall till the other has cleared the rollers. That can happen sometimes anyway.

James

[David Kumm]

To a certain extent snipe is a tradeoff for the molding capacity. To make room for the cutters, there is no chipbreaker or pressure bar and the rollers need to be a little farther away so some hold down stability is lost. Dave

[James White]

To a certain extent snipe is a tradeoff for the molding capacity. To make room for the cutters, there is no chipbreaker or pressure bar and the rollers need to be a little farther away so some hold down stability is lost. Dave

This may be why it can not be totally eliminated. But I think the unacceptable amount of snipe that most are talking about is caused by the opposite. You can literally watch the board hop up after the in-feed rollers disengage. This may be unique to the 725. Some of the spring is caused by the width of the bed vs the amount of cast iron it is made of. Too little to be totally rigid in its 25" span. Then you have the fact that the entire machine is made of sheet metal. When you consider all of the places that will "give" a little. It all adds up to an unacceptable amount of snipe. Keep in mind that the 725 is less than half the weight of other planers in this size.

I am not really sold on the whole notion that great amounts of feed roller pressure is needed to avoid snipe. What I think it does is compensate for poor support of the board that is being fed in. This is why it is better to have the infeed and outfeed tabled too high rather than risk them being too low. After all the theory of too little roller pressure does not explain snipe on the tail end of a board.

James

[Russ D Wood]

I purchased a used 725 and have used it quite a bit. As far as dust collection I have found that since it is a planner and not a saw that the stuff the DC doesn't collect is not really dust but rather chips like from your hand plane. Very easy cleanup for what does not go in the DC. And yes there is some snipe but knowing that you just work around it. Now something the others have not touched on but it is certainly the loudest piece in my shop so please wear ear protection! The purchase of a used unit was further enhanced by the fact that when I went to pick it up the fellow said oh BTW there is another box or two of stuff over there that goes with it. The other box or two of 'stuff' was 36 different molding blades! :rolleyes: Very cool. Russ

[Greg Portland]

First off, I'm really glad I finally found a good wood working forum, the wife isn't thrilled but I love it, great site.

So I'm strongly considering a Woodmaster 725, I was very skeptical of these machines for many reasons but I just can't find many bad things said about them and the price comparable to what else is out there is great. I was planning on getting everything but the sanding head as I have a widebelt and would probably never use the sand on the Woodmaster. I am also going to order it with the spiral head on it.

My question to you is, is there another tool out there that I should be looking at that is comparable to this one for what it can do? If not, are there any nuances with this machine that I should know about?

Thanks for any help.
Shawn
What features are you planning to use? If you're just getting it to use as a planer then IMO you are better off finding a used 24" SCMI (S-630, etc.) or equivalent. Once you add planer beds, bed extensions, planer head, digital height, forward/reverse feed knob, etc. onto the base price of the 725 you're at the same price point ($4k-$7k range). I own a Woodmaster 718 and it works pretty well for ripping, moulding, sanding, and planing while taking up minimal shop space. The quality is on par or better than the separate Asian machines (Griz, Jet, etc.). However, a high end planer, moulder, etc. are clearly superior. If you are just buying a planer then look @ the used industrial market... you can find absolute steals right now.

[Jim Andrew]

Mine is the 718, have the helical head, and added a 6" flange for dust. That 6" flange is a great addition. Pretty thin metal to weld, but a wire welder worked good. The helical head is great too. I have gone to just planing lumber down to 7/8" and glue up panels at that thickness, then use my Griz thickness sander to grind down. Makes the panels as flat as any.