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It worked well out of the box and continued to do so for the first year. As a result the bushings siezed on the shafts destroying the shafts and causing the chain drive and sprockets to break. The bushings that support the rollers are very cheap and not designed for much use as there is no way to keep them adequately lubricated. I purchased this planer a couple years ago to plane rough cut pine. After about 1,000bf of mainly pine the drive rollers started having trouble pulling material throught the cutterhead. This is going to be a fairly expensive repair so I am simply going to do minimal repairs to get by until I can purchase a better designed planer. I should have taken notice at this point and determined the problem, I may have been able to prevent the problems I now have.
I use this planer to bring lumber down close to size, and then run it though a MM planer to get it to the exact thickness with near perfect results.This is a lunchbox planer. If you wanted this planer as your standalone unit, you'd be very happy. getting a finish cut left by a $2000 planer with Shelix cutterhead. This is a quality lunchbox planer. Just don't expect what (apparently) some reviewers expect.that is.
If you are looking for super high quality planing work, you're a fool to buy this unit and except such performance. Nothing more, nothing less. It works great at what it does and hasn't given me a problem. It actually takes a very nice thickness out per cut and leaves a pretty good edge.
I just got my first nick in the blades but that was after 9 months of use. I had my mind set on the 13" 3 knife dewalt but when I saw that the 12 1/2" dewalt now has 3 knives I saved $150 and bought this one. I have been planning on creating my own custom trimwork for my house and decided to get a planer. I was not dissapointed, right out of the box the all settings were dead on. I would buy this planer again in a heartbeat. I have run a ton of wood including oak, maple, walnut, yellowheart, purpleheart, redwood, mahogany ect.
I ran less than 100 foot of white pine and had to turn the blades over. Buyer beware.Dewalt has lost my respect as a quality tool maker. Two of the bolts holding the blades were tightened from the factory too tight, and stripped out. I ended up drilling and using a bolt extractor to remove the two bolts.
Black locust is a tough wood though. We killed once belt because of heavy duty work we were performing on it. Not bad but one side of planer knives was shot in one day so we had to turn over to use opposite side. Well I cannot spend 50$ almost every week for planer knives so I purchased sharpener from Woodcraft.
I would buy carbide tipped planer knives.We have dust collector hooked up to this planer. It reminds me of some printer manufacturers. I wished they used some standard knives. We used this planer to plane black locust that was used to build a playset for my kids. Anyway not a heavy duty machine. We get 1700 feet of 4" wide black locust on sharpened planer knives (1 pass). We got rid probably of 500 gallons of black locust shavings.Overall I am pleased but cannot give 5 stars due to nonstandard disposable planer knives.
We give you almost a free printer but we will make up with ink. We planed even 4"x8"x16' (black locust). The only problem is that knives are disposable and expensive. Dewalt seems to follow this logic except planer is not almost free. Sharpener probably paid itself off.
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