Shop Fox W1742(S) Opinions

[Ron Bontz]

If anyone has had a Shop Fox W1742 (S) planer for a while I would greatly appreciate your thoughts/ opinion of the machine. Or if you had any problems with it what were they. Thanks for your time. :)

[glenn bradley]

That's a twin of my Grizzly G0453Z with a different switch post. I have been very happy with the 453. It offers easy adjustment of feed rollers and such for varying material types. I work mostly with furniture parts so I have my pressure pretty light and the delta between rollers and cutters near zero. Snipe and milling marks are very rare visitors; infrequent enough that I look to see what I did wrong if I get anything other than a beautiful surface ;-)

More specifically:

Pros -
Easier to de-pallet than I thought it would be.
Easier to adjust than I thought it would be.
More powerful than I expected at this price.
Mobile base makes moving very easy (don't let it get away from you).

Cons -

Lots of goo to remove.
Feed roller marks were pretty definite (this doesn't really count since they disappeared when I readjusted the alignment).
Hmmmm . . . nope, can't come up with anything else and I was already reaching for the "roller marks" comment ;-)

My thread: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?145588-Decided-on-the-G0453Z-Planer&highlight=