Hi all,
There have been many threads on this topic before, but I think I'm coming from a slightly different direction, so please bear with me.
I am a hobbyist, and my main interest is furniture. I use hand planes as much as possible. I do face jointing by hand, but am in the market for a thickness planer. However... the last thing that's going to touch a board I'm working with is likely to be my smooth plane.
I know that there are varying opinions on the quality of finish you get with a helical cutterhead vs a traditional straight-knife cutterhead, but I think those questions don't really matter for my case, since I'm going to hand plane the board anyway after it's brought to thickness.
So my question is: when you remove from consideration the quality of finish... do the other advantages of a helical cutterhead --- quieter, easier to maintain, easier to setup --- still make it worth the higher price? I sort of suspect that since the thickness planer isn't going to be a 'finish tool' in my shop, it's not worth it for me to get the helical head, but I'm very interested in your opinions on this.
As far as the exact planer I'm considering, all I know so far is:
- nothing with a universal motor (I'll end up divorced... quieter is better)
- 15" is plenty, since I'm only going to be running boards through it, not panels
- I'm not really interested in spending the time and money to resurrect any old arn
- designed for dust collection, which also rules out some older arn
Thanks.
-JS3