What a Tool!

[The Medway Handyman]

Not had much luck with electric planers recently. My much used & respected (15 year old) Skil died a few months ago right in the middle of a job, no choice but to nip into B&Q and buy a P Pro/McAlister all singing, all dancing, 3 blade, magnesium, sooper dooper wonder planer.

What a pile of sh*te. Blades presumably made of ex baked bean tins, blunted after a very short time. Only available in B&Q in packs of 2 - really useful on a 3 blade planer and not cheap either.

Had a job today to hang 5 doors so I decided to reverse the blades - 45 mins of tarting about and I couldn't get the bl**dy thing to plane square whatever I did.

Decided to avoid B&Q's rubbish this time & went to local Argos. Typically the Bosch PHO1 at £39 was out of stock. Having realised the Challenge Extreme stuff is worse rubbish than B&Q I went for the Black & Decker 900W jobby at £35.

What an impressive piece of kit! Streets ahead of the P Pro/McAllister rubbish and even better than my tried & trusted Skil.

Always been impressed with my B&D circular saw - apart from the fence. This planer has impressed me even more. Really does work well. Perhaps it's time to take a fresh look at B&D?

[George]

Whoops! the plastic casing that holds the rotator on it shatters when you hit a knot. :-)

[The Medway Handyman]

I'll look out for that thanks. It has a 2 year warranty.

[George]

There was a promotional offer at my local shed on these last year,I bought one and used it on pine which had a hidden knot...next thing you know the darn thing went all over the place with an almighty grinding noise and chunks taken out of the wood had to switch it off at the wall socket to stop it as it had jammed smoke coming from its arse end and the pivot which the shaft is seated in was totally destroyed.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've got a B&D circular saw, planer and reversible vari-speed mains hammer drill all from their 'Tradesman' era, and never felt the need to get something better - they just do what they say on the box. Dunno about their modern stuff - those are all many years old.

[Andy Burns]

Including professional use, or only for DIY?

[John Rumm]

Nice touch ;-)

I have a PHO1 (bought probably 12 years ago - so they may have improved it since then) - not sure I would recommend it though since it has a few irritations. The results it gets are ok in general but the surface finish is not first rate. Blade changing is a pain since getting the blade offset set just right is tricky and requires lots of trial and error and test cuts etc. The exhaust port is a daft shape that makes it impossible to connect to a vacuum without some special add on adaptor. Finally there is not much rebate depth. It would be nice if it came with the add on fence, but alas that is extra also.

I have always found B&D tools to be a bit of a mixed bag. The older stuff they did under the "Proline" label seems pretty good generally (I have a 7" circular saw, 115mm angle grinder, and 9.6V cordless combi drill), all of which have lasted well and performed ok. The only B&D planes I have used however have been a bit of a disappointment. One was a basic model that had nothing special to recommend it (less impressive than the Bosch in pretty much every respect). Another was a larger more serious tool that actually got nice results and was ok to use. Its weakness however seemed to be its bearings that had a habit of falling apart.

[Andy Burns]

I've had a BD plane for about 15 years (BD-RE500?) it's put up with a fir bit of (ab)use, recently went to replace it's blades and found the ones available were new about 2mm too long for it, managed to snap them down to length in the vice, worked ok, then a few days later I dropped it and snapped off the adjustment height knob, couldn't glue it back on satisfactorily so now am looking for a new one ...

[Andy Hall]

Makita and DeWalt seem to get the consistently good reviews unless you fancy springing for a Festool.