Powermatic Model 201 22" Planer

[Chris Rosenberger]

Does anyone have any exrerance with one of these?

[Nick Mitchell]

Hi Chris,

I have no personal useage experience with this planer but I did give it a thorough going-over at a show. Here's some brief thoughts.
It's a typical chiwanese planer but definitely one of the better ones. Fit and finish is quite good and if I recall it weighs about 1200lbs so it's reasonably sturdy. 4 knife cutterhead and a segmented infeed roller. Planer table had only 2 adjustment screws (4 is more precise).
If you're looking at single phase , a 7.5 hp motor is almost beyond the capabilities of single phase reliability. Might be time to look at migrating into 3 phase and a phase converter.
IMO this is a decent medium-heavy duty planer for the price. Before you decide on this one though, look at the Oliver 4455 planer. I'm pretty sure you can get it for about $1000 less and it's virtually identical, probably the same factory. You can also have the Oliver fitted with the Byrd head at the distributor.
hope this helps and good luck, you'll love having a big planer

[Dev Emch]

Hi Nick....

An oliver 4455 planer? You must be talking about the blue oliver and not the green oliver, right? Blue olivers are also from the same region of production unless of course Bejing has annexed Grand Rapids....