Shopsmith Forums

Well you all brought up good (positive) points, there happens to be a free standing SS planer for sale for 400 in the chicago area on CL. As far as space, when it aint on the SS it has to be some where!
I always wanted the DeWalt after seeing a demo, but could not justify the 649.00. Now it is all relative to what your discretionary income and cost/value standards are. I ended up getting a Ryobi 10" used for 80.00 from a guy, it was his dads and he used it till he could justify the DeWalt on sale with the router. I can still get parts for the Ryobi from a secondary supplier, it does what I need it to, BUT I have a store 12 miles from me, Kettle Moraine Hard Woods that sells wood, thats all they do, native and exotics. Check site here and there wood prices, very reasonable. They have their own kiln. They have a 52" planer, 48" drum sander, 8" resaw machine. They charge a minimum of 2.50 for that service at .25 a minute for planing and 1.10 a minute for sanding and resawing, with a 100 grit oscillating head, comes out closer to 120 grit. So I am fortunate that I dont need a large planer. I have done 8" wide hard maple with no problem on my Ryobi, but I keep it sharp and only take of about a fat 32nd at a time on hard wood and usually use it to make things less then 3\4" since I have KMHW do my machining from rough sawn as they sell it. I was not bashing SS just think that is a heck of allot. Ohp forgot!!!
http://www.kmhardwoods.com/introduction.cfm

teacherman wrote:So you're saying my old greenie motor is strong enough for a big thickness planer like that? That's great. I just figured wit it being 60 years old, it wouldn't be wise to subject it to that much stress. I do like the separate feed motor, that helps I'm sure.

I quickly found that increasing the cutter head speed really helps on the thickness planer. I had great difficultly planning 2X12 oak boards until I used my jack shaft setup (link belts) to increase the cutter head speed from 5200 to around 7500 RPM. I used this same jack shaft setup to decrease the bandsaw speed down to around 200 RPM for cutting metal. I believe using a 1 3/4 to 2 HP motor along with the Planer Pulley Retro Kit (555114) on a Power Stand is well worth the effort.

It should do fine unless you're using a hogging cut.

teacherman wrote:So you're saying my old greenie motor is strong enough for a big thickness planer like that? That's great. I just figured wit it being 60 years old, it wouldn't be wise to subject it to that much stress. I do like the separate feed motor, that helps I'm sure.

I meant the hogging comment for this quote.

7/8 vs 3/4 hp might have been the question.

One thing I like about the shopsmith planer is being able to sharpen the knives so easily, with the sharpening jig and conical sanding disk. Amazing, really.

algale wrote: And the DW735 has more more width and height capacity than the SS: 13 wide (vs 12 for the SS)]

Has ANYBODY here needed to plane a SIX INCH THICK board?

beeg wrote:Has ANYBODY here needed to plane a SIX INCH THICK board?

Nope. But I have sent boards wider than 12 inches through ....

algale wrote:Nope. But I have sent boards wider than 12 inches through ....

And I can see situations where would want to plane something >4"…not very often but occasionally and a limitation I wouldn't be thrilled about if I was spending $1400+ on a planer.

Like most things in life, it's a bell shaped curve. You are sooner or later going to find an exception, size wise, to every tool made. Most of the wood I have ever planed is between 8/4 and 1/4 and between 1 and 12 inches wide. If it falls outside of what a tool can handle, then it's problem solving time, which most woodworkers are pretty good at.

beeg wrote:Has ANYBODY here needed to plane a SIX INCH THICK board?

No, but I have edge planed boards up to 6" wide. This requires clamping the boards together to get a wider base and top surface. I usually have 4 or 5 boards edge planed at the same time. The 735 actually goes up a little more than 6".