Can I use a power hand planer to plane a full sized board?

[Allen Seidman]

I am making some Adirondack chairs. The arm rests need to be thinned down 1/4 inch. Can I use a 3 1/4 inch electric hand planer?

[Mike Cutler]

Yes you can but you need to be careful. You can take a lot of material off quick with one of them.
Scribe you material on the sides of the board and mark the high spots with a pencil to keep track of where you've planed already.

[Jamie Buxton]

The arm rests are wider than the 3 1/4"? I'd call that challenging. In my hands at least, an electric hand planer is far from a precision machine.

[Jerry Miner]

1/4" armrests for an Adirondack? sounds unusual.

Yes, you CAN plan your stock with a hand-held power plane, but I would plan on finishing the process with something else: belt sander, maybe.

edit: Oh, you're taking OFF 1/4". That makes more sense!

[Alex Zeller]

You may be better off with a belt sander. I'm assuming that you are using a soft wood like cedar. Grizzly sells a hand spindle sander that you hold with one hand and connect to a cordless drill on the other. I think something like that would allow you to sculpt the arms pretty easily for the same price as a cheap hand power planer. My biggest problem with a hand power planer is that anything close to the width of it is about as wide as it can do. When I make side by side passes it never lines up seamlessly.

[Al Launier]

+1 on the belt sander - better control.

[Peter Christensen]

You make the first pass with the planer parallel to the board. To step over you raise the front a touch more and with the back of the plane on the just cut surface skew the plane along the board so the front is over the uncut wood and it should come close to flat. Sand it to finish off the rest. Or rig a router riding on rails.

[Rich Engelhardt]

It's a real toss up as to which can cause more damage...

My GMC hand power plane or my Remington 870 12 ga......

[lowell holmes]

If the arms are loose, I would rip them close on a tables saw and finish with the planer or hand plane.

[Ole Anderson]

To see what can be done with a hand held power plane you need to check out what Louis from Tips From a Shipwright can do.

[Ted Phillips]

As a sidenote, I love watching Louis Sauzedde wield a hand-held power planer on Tips from a Shipwright. He always says that these things are irreplaceable and yet difficult to learn to use correctly. I would tend to agree with him. One slip and you'll wish you had never picked it up.

[Bradley Gray]

Unless the wood is too dear I say make a couple extra arms, mark a line to work to and go for it. Just don't try to take off too much at once. The one I have will take a super fine cut.

Good opportunity to learn how to use your power plane.

[Brian Holcombe]

I would resale this, very rarely does my power plane come up but they’re great tools. I use them to flatten slabs that are too large for the big jointer.

[Mark Hennebury]

No trouble at all. You use them like any other tool. I have used the many times to flatten table tops, and am currently flattening a 12' x 30' pine floor. It would not be my tool of choice for your job, i would use a thicknessplaner, jointer, bandsaw, table saw first of course, but you can use whatever you have at hand, even an axe can get a good job done. You can get a great job done with a power plane and finish it with a hand plane.

[Allen Seidman]

You make the first pass with the planer parallel to the board. To step over you raise the front a touch more and with the back of the plane on the just cut surface skew the plane along the board so the front is over the uncut wood and it should come close to flat. Sand it to finish off the rest. Or rig a router riding on rails.

So the first one goes front to back and the rest side to side so to speak ? I have use a router w a sled before for really rough deep planning but this is just a 1/4 inch reduction on pretty smallest pieces. I but the power planer too, so I kind of want to give it a try.... thanks.