Planer (powered) advice?

[al]

I'm looking to buy a mid-range planer. That opens me up to the B&D's, Bosch's, etc. of the world - any bad/good stories for this kind of range? Doesn't seem to be a lot between them price wise.

a

[The Natural Philosopher]

I got a really cheap one from B & Q that has been surprisingly good - I take it you mean a hand planer.

Mine was about 30 quid I think.

[Andy Hall]

I looked at these a few months ago for a few jobs.

I had had an old B&D one which didn't get a lot of use and which had problems with blade setting and the belt snapping. It got occasional use for door trimming etc. but that was about it.

I have a belt sander which will accomplish many of the hand planer type jobs with a finer degree of control, and then for other work hand planes and a thicknessing and planing machine. So it really reduced the number of applications for a hand power planer.

I looked at a few with a price limit of £150 in mind.

Generally, the more expensive ones have larger motors and can take larger depths of cut and are sometimes wider. Width can help, but I'm not sure of the point in taking 3mm slices of wood for most applications. 1mm gives a much better outcome.

I tried out a few in a tool store in the U.S. and this is one tool where I would consider buying a cheap one around £30 and eventually binning it - but that's for my intended use. Somebody recently mentioned the Skil (owned by Bosch) and that has a smaller motor and less cut than its peers. I think that that is a good strategy unless one is looking for something to hack large amounts of wood away to make shavings for the hamster.

Those at about £50-80 seemed to be rather better, mechanically. The Makita 1902 was quite nice and had an 82mm width which helps with stability. Alternatively, the Bosch GHO-26 was pretty nice - more powerful at 770W and £75, so about the same price.

I noticed a big difference between that and the £30 jobs, but it's not as stark as with jigsaws and I'm not sure that it was £40 better.

I would start by thinking about what you want it for and how much use. I don't think that these can ever be particularly accurate tools, so the applications are fairly limited. If you want to try to use it across a range of applications and quite a bit and don't have alternatives, then it probably is worth something around the £70 area.

[Pete C]

Hi,

I recently bought a Skil from Machinemart that I'm quite pleased with.

I had a B&D 10 years ago that had a lot of use and was pretty good, but these days would tend to go for Skil or Bosch.

cheers, Pete.

[AlexW]

I had a B&Q PP jobby (about 20 quid IIRC) ... it only did 2 doors before the brushes gave out and there were no spares.

I took it back to B&Q and got a BOSCH PHO 16-82 (about 40 odd quid IIRC). This has done tons of work and is not showing signs of failing.

It also has a nice feature of being able to attach the dust bag on either side.

[Nicholas]

I have a Hitachi, not sure what model. It's been fine but for a planer that cost in excess of £100 I have been disappointed by the cable that came with it. No flex in it at all. And that oddly enough makes a big difference to the use of the tool.

Next time it'll be DeWalt. Most of their tools come with a nice long flexible cable....

Cheers

Nicholas

[Rod Hewitt]

"al" wrote in news:75NWd.309529$ [e-mail]:

I have got a green Bosch (Scintilla, actually) - treated it dreadfully. Still works. Just changed the blade around the other day - amazingly good. You can choose which side to fit the shaving collecting bag - which is convenient.

Many years ago had a B&D Pro - which was heavier and much more awkward to control. The gyroscopic effect was very pronounced.

[al]

Yes, I do. Not sure if I've seen their one - I'm nearer a Homebase and their home-brand stuff has fallen to bits on me in the past! :(

a

[Stefek Zaba]

I'm not the only one on this NG to have replaced a couple of tools' supplied cable with a longer length of a good synth-rubber flex - H07RN-F is a particularly worth-tracking-down spec, retaining flexibility at low temps (like 'Arctic' PVC is supposed to), hard-wearing, and reasonably resistant to various organic solvents. True, opening up the case to do the replacement typically Voids The Warrantee; but if it's the flex that's marring an otherwise right-for-you tool, it's not rocket science to change it...

[al]

Getting carpets fitted soon and that's what I need it for first & foremost!

I had a belt sander until it caught fire (cheap Toledo). Real animal it was too - tore wood away like you wouldn't believe (mind the pun!). Hard to control though and get a square surface. Must buy another one soon, but I still need a plane for more precision work.

Way more than I can afford to spend. I think £50 is about my limit. Looking on Ebay too - some bargains from time to time. I think reliability and quality of cut are more important than depth of cut within reason.

Interesting, this is more around my price point. A second hand Makita might be nice!

I desperately need a good (cable) jigsaw too. I have the world's crappiest battery operated one that makes it about 10cm into 12mm ply before frying the battery and giving up! Any suggestions?

Very occasional use, but want it to last and be reasonably pleasant to use. Probably only come out a few times a year.

a

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Yup. On just about every mains tool I have, I've replaced the flex with a longer one. Which for DIY makes them less likely for me to want a cordless, since you then don't have to always use an extension. Think the worst I had was a B&D stapler which had only 1 metre of flex.

FWIW, I still like TRS. I'll have a look at the one you recommend.

[Andy Dingley]

Sounds useful - where does one track it down ?

I'm really impressed with the 25m 13A black rubber extension lead I bought from Lidl last year. It was cheaper than bulk cable and I've carved it up as new leads for several tools, including my 3hp cabinet saw. It must be specced for German winter use, as it has stayed flexible down below freezing, when my other cables were distinctly stiff.

[RichardS]

reliability

My local hire shop does heavy duty planers for £8.50 a day or £11 a weekend (plus vat) - if you've got an instant need then it might be better to hire a decent one for this job and keep an eye out for a decent one on ebay. It's likely to be a brute of a Makita or a blue Bosch (funny how they don't seem to go for DeWalts... !).

That'd let you spend a bit more on that jigsaw. Trust me, the one tool that you don't want to buy on the cheap is a jigsaw... £90 plus and they become worthy of use - ie maintain a vertical cut, etc.

If you have a circular saw then you can always trim the bottom of the doors with that. temporarily clamp/nail some scrap to the door edges to prevent tearout.

[Andy Dingley]

Except for my AEG or Freud tools (both from the same factory) which come as standard with long, robust and flexible cables. Funny how I still think that my £240 AEG SDS drill was a good bargain and the one I'd buy again if I lost it (despite the Boschs posted yesterday for half this amount). The two things aren't unrelated - getting trivial rubbish like the _cable_ right is just the sort of cheap item that makes me glad I bought the expensive tool.

OTOH, my Antex soldering irons (I'm sorry, I bought a skipful) have bits of wet string, best used as firelighters. And if there's one place you really do notice flexibility and burn resistance, it's on a soldering iron.

[Andy Dingley]

Ooh, do Scintilla make other Bosch stuff apart from the (excellent) barrel-body jigsaws ? That would make me think about buying them.

[Ian Johnston]

: It was somewhere outside Barstow when Rod Hewitt : wrote: : : >I have got a green Bosch (Scintilla, actually) : : Ooh, do Scintilla make other Bosch stuff apart from the (excellent) : barrel-body jigsaws ?

I thought Scintilla was an electric-motor-manufacturing bit of the Bosch group?

The green plunge router is also Scintilla. If you remove the router bits you get the Bosch die grinder. The router costs rather less than the die grinder. I have never worked this out ...

Ian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Antex give you the choice of PVC or silicone at least on their low voltage ones. It's my iron of choice by a mile. I've got 4 50 watt LV temperature controlled ones I simply swap when I want a different bit. Of course they're much more costly than some they make. I can have two at once on my home made station - separately switched. The de-solder iron is Pace - bought thinking the most expensive would also be the best, but although it works well it's not brilliant ergonomically. For some reason when you remove it from the stand, it's always upside down so the button for the pump is on the bottom not top. And I can never find the foot switch. :-)

[Rod Hewitt]

"Ian Johnston" wrote in news:cCUlhtvFIYkV-pn2-y3H8GY6Bl95z@localhost:

No idea. But the rating plate on the planer clearly states Scintilla, Switzerland - everything else (that I can see) says Bosch. I simply assumed that they were bought up by Bosch (as were Skil) with there being an outside possibility that Bosch were simply relabelling bought in products.

[Nicholas]

Stefek

The point is that a tool that costs quite a lot of cash should come with the long flexible cable attached so that you don't have to void your guarentee by opening up the tool to replace the rubbish that 's supplied.

I'm off to my local cable stockists this morning and by afternoon I'll have a void guarantee but a useable planer...:-)

Cheers

Nicholas