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It was on sale through Amazon at the time for about $275 delivered. Otherwise you'll be spewing chips ALL over your workshop. You're going to want to get the dust chute which is sold seperately though. After some consideration, I bought this planer last summer. Since that also included a spare set of knives, it was a hard deal to beat. I find that snipe is minimal, I'm sure that's due to the cutterhead lock which is a great feature available on many planers these days.Setup was simple with the only thing that needed to be done was assemble the stand and bolt the planer to it.All in all I think this is a great planer for the weekend woodworker who won't be sending 100's of boardfeet a day through it. I've put pine, basswood and maple through it with no complaints.
For the price and low to moderate usage, it can't be beat. If you looking for an industrial, stationary planer, this isn't it. Thicker lumber hasn't been a problem at all. I picked this planer up for about $270 with free shipping. Relatively little snipe. If you're looking to plane a few board feet every time you do a project, wait for a sale and jump on it. I have had trouble on occassion with feeding, but it has only been on very thing starting pieces (1/4" inch).
Having now read other reviews (obviously too late to do me any good) I see that it is a serious problem, one that Delta does not appear to be willing to address. Do not buy the Delta TP400LS 12 1/2" thickness planer.If only it would feed. If it would feed, it would be a great product. I would not recommend buying this product. My TP400LS worked well for about four months (low useage, about 50 to 100 lineal ft of board) then suddenly stopped feeding.
And if the truth be told about it, they do cost only a few pennies to make, and package, and ship all the way from China. As it turns out, I'll be buying a planer with resharpenable blades (that cost less than disposable blades by the way), and a rather robust and expensive blade sharpening machine, ALL for less than the price of one of these glitzy little name brand jobs. They have got so many reasons that a board can dull a blade they never get pinned down to making a blade that's tough enough for the job. And it's a very simple fix for the industry to make this technology more viable.
If disposable planer blades sold for a dollar a piece, one could regard this as a fairly good deal. All of the disposable blade units do. But the sets sell for $30-50 dollars. They didn't have a no star rating, but this one deserves it.
I even purchased a planer, a delta 400, and ran through a set of blades testing it. Thirty dollars a dozen would be more in line with the performance of these disposable blades. When something is as public domain as a knife, and the complexity of manufacture less than that of a happy meal toy, and it can be turned out on a machine by the thousands per hour, there is something very wrong with charging $30-$40 dollars for it. Simply ship the planers with a dozen sets of blades and offer free knife replacement for the life of the unit. Well this is really the same problem because when the blades go dull, the cutter head starts giving more resistance to the rollers and the boards stop feeding properly. I was looking for a small planer and there are some really cool looking tools out there. It's just plane stupid to buy a planer that uses these "disposable" blades. A disposable item is something that can be thrown away without having to pay much heed to the cost.
Hi Guys, I just spent a good long time researching a tool purchase. And this just isn't good economy for cheap high speed steel construction that chips and dulls so easily in this application. And calling it disposable is just plane ridiculouse. What I found out is that any planer that relies on a set of disposable blades is going to put a big hole in my budget if I actually intend to use it.
I took my Delta back to the retailer and he graciously returned it to his vendor for reasons of customer satisfaction. And almost every small planer on the market these days has gone to disposable blades. There are two big common threads in all of the reviews for small planers and they are: The blades go dull too fast, and the planer doesn't feed the wood like it should. So this unit is a definite pass.
The way I want to use my planer, I could easily go through a couple of sets of blades a day.
I wished I had the money to buy a 15" model with an induction motor. I highly recommend getting the 4" dust chute. I have had this planer for two years. I wished the chip/dust chute was angled to the side. It works great. This is extra on the Dewalt model. It does a great job and snipe is minimal.
It is very easy to change the blades and they are two sided and can flip them around when one side dulls. This tool is very loud and does get hot to the touch. This would help tremendously with guiding my 4" dust hose away from the exiting stock. It comes with an infeed and outfeed table.
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