Planers Reviews

Same as previous. 36-680 does not fit on this base. I hade to go and but a universal base and will be shipping this one back.

I bought this 50-277 machine base, plus the 50-284 extension (ASIN B0000223CH) to use with my Powermatic 64 tablesaw, which has the 50" fence and table. I was a bit worried about whether this part was properly sized for the Powermatic 64's foot dimensions, but it was just fine.

It's exceedingly easy to raise and lower the third wheel.

With the third wheel lowered, it is pretty simple for me to move the table saw around my limited garage floor space. The garage floor (cement) is divided into 4 sections, and the base allows me to roll the machine over the recesses between sections without much difficulty. When the third wheel is raised, I feel pretty comfortable that the machine will not be moving while I'm using it.

I wish I had purchased this years ago. I just bought Delta Mobile Bases for my table saw, band saw and drill Press. Will soon be buying one for my planer. Great product, well made, moves easily and stays put when the foot pedal is not engaged. Highly recommend.

I,m a long-time finish carpenter and have used the Dewalt and Makita planners as well as this contraption. This one's a dud. What's with pushing a button to pull the trigger? That's fine for Harry Homeowner, but odd angle starts are next to impossible. And that little ridge at the top of the handle is annoying and painful. Perhaps I missed something when rabbeting with the Dewalt, but with the PC you are advised to move the blades; what a pain. The Dewalt has a strange, not altogether likeable foot on the base for setting the thing down while the motor spins to a stop. No such feature on the PC. It is also poorly balanced. The Dewalt was user-friendly right from the box. If it weren't the boss's tool and the only one on the job I'd send the PC back. The only strong point is that the fence slot seems more durable than the cheezy holes in the thin plastic housing found in the Dewalt. Hold out for the door plane, is my advice.

I have owned this planer for a couple of years, and it has been very helpful when I get in a tight situation and just need to take a little wood off. It can also take a deep cut in the wood, removing a large amount of wood with one pass. It is a light weight tool, and very powerful.

I've owned this tool now for about 3-months and have used it a quite a bit. I bought it to plane out bowed wall and ceiling studs prior to installing sheetrock (which is pretty tough duty because the wood is old, dry and hard).

Even pressing down hard at a full 1/8" depth, this unit cuts through wood and knots like a beaver. The motor keeps the blades spinning at full speed without bogging down.

Keep in mind that using a plane (manual or power) requires some practice and skill to perfect the outcome. You just don't slap it down on the wood and start cutting. Most attachments such as fences and guides will help provide some alignment assistance, but you'll still need to develop the skill. Once you get the hang of it, you'll find that it is a real time saver and provides far superior results over other triming, chiseling and planing methods.

Recommendations: * High Power - this is a must-have feature, anything less will be a source of endless frustration. * Heavy Weight - this is one of those times when you don't want light weight. You will need the mass to maintain constant travel and to keep the tool down on the work. * Parts Availability - Power planers are not very popular, so don't buy some goofy off-brand. You may need parts later such as replacement blades. * Safe(ty)... - Eye and ear protection is an absolute must with these tools. Not only do wood chips fly everywhere, they make a loud high pitched screech during operation.

After reading a few reviews here, I can understand some of the dissapointments.
We received our planer in good condition and did need to fine tune some of the settings. We consider this fairly normal however. The one problem we experienced out the gate though was that a chip deflector broke from it's weld and fell into the knife head. Since we purchase this unit from a large dealership, Powermatic shipped all the needed replacement parts immediately. Unfortunately, our several hours of labor required to fix the unit were not covered. Not a big surprise though.
If you are a serious woodworker or have a medium or larger shop, I would highly recommend replacing the cutter head with the one offered by Byrd Tool as we did.
The results were more than like night and day. We have had the same knives in the planer for almost 6 months and have yet to change or adjust them. Extremely quiet, vertually no tear out or chatter. Powermatic used to offer this head with a few select machines. We will use this new head design on all our joiners and planers.

the first unit arrived in terrible condition. It was not securred to the pallet and the crating was not designed to ship something of this weight. Amazon went above and beyond when it came to replacing the unit. I received the second unit with less damage but still not an up to standard shipping crate. This time Amazon sent the replacement parts and the unit is a hungry working monster. I love it. A little rust on one of the infeed conveyors. Amazon is king when it comes to something of this size. I was nervous ordering machinery of this magnitude. I would and will buy from Amazon again.

I have to give credit to Amazon for excellent customer service. Within two weeks I placed 2 orders for large format woodworking equipment from 2 different companies. The first was a 20" Powermatic Planer from Amazon and the shipping was flawless down to the liftgate service covered by Amazon. The second experience was with a company that competes with Amazon and the product was an 8" Powermatic Parallelogram Jointer. The second product required many phone conversations with little results and much frustration with regard to shipping. The end result was an additional $60.00 charge for a liftgate and at least 2 hours of phone time to resolve the issue. I was not the tool king as they had predicted that I would be.
The planer has proven to be a great product. It produces a mirror smooth finish on hardwoods and doesn't balk at wide board face surfacing. I have not connected the unit to a dust collector and I can honestly report that without a dust collection device the unit is rather messy. Solid construction, easy set-up, great performance; I would highly recommend this product to any non-production woodworker.

I purchaesd this so I could remove my Dewalt 735 Planer from my dust collection system and use a seperate trash can with a trash bag. I used a plastic trash can first with the brackets for the handles cut away so the bag would fit tighter to the can. The planer blows the sawdust out with so much force that it kept blowing the bag off the can. I next tried a steel trash can. Same problem. Contrary to all my other Dewalt tools, I'm very disappointed with this chip collector.

This was a little disappointment. I hope to figure out a way to keep the sawdust from blowing out of the sides. It doesn't seal well, but it does catch most of the sawdust. Maybe 3/4 of it.

Works great. Bag is large and will fit a 55 gallon drum. It's great to not have the mess and cleanup.

My unit is the 1923, which apart from a different rabbet system and 850 watt motor, is esentially the same. They have plenty of power, easy blade set and change and all that, with the usual top Makita build quality. But, the handle design! Ugh. Short sole plate, single hole for fence and top heavy balance. The angle of the main handle and its high position, with the poor front knob placement make these things very difficult to use effectively. Why oh why do power planer manufacturers continue to make em to this pattern?

Compared to the u beaut old 1100, which is still available in 240V guise, they are not in the hunt. I bought my 1100 second hand, after I'd bought the 1923h. The other way round, and I'd only have one.

Anyone want to buy a good secondhand 1923?

If you need to trim door slabs (other than pre-hung)- this is the best tool. It produces very smooth cuts with little effort. It is also quiet. I'm not sure if a dust bag is available - the tool throws a lot of dust, so be ready. I have used it to trim up to 1/4 inch of 80 inch long doors (precor masonite doors). The tool is prefect - provides a very straight finished edge that can not be accomplished using any other power tool, even a table saw

I have owned this tool for about five years, I was not happy with the fence that comes with the tool, even with the fence as tight as it could be it still would move when planing.It wasn't until about a year ago that I found that makita makes a bevel guide, which is an ajustable fence that is screwed to the planer in front and the back, stopping the fence from twisting.
With the bevel guide it is a five star tool.

I received my jointer blades today and noticed the edges are defective on two of the three and even a bit rough on the third. There are small nicks along the edges (slight but noticeable). I am replacing the original Jet knives for this very reason. I have two Jet knives that are quite new, and one badly nicked one, so I took the best Freud knife and simply replaced the Jet with it. It's acceptable I suppose. For the cost, I didn't want to go through the hassle of returning. The difference between the Jet and Freud knives are 5 grams or 1/4 oz. so no biggy as far as balance goes. I wouldn't recommend their purchase!!

Installed these knives on my Jet J-60S jointer & am amazed at how much better they cut compared to the Jet knives even when they were new. Half the price and twice as good--in my opinion. Longevity remains to be seen. Great so far!

I have owned a 6" open stand Jet jointer for a few years now and I finally reached that point where a new set of jointer knives was unavoidable. After calling Jet customer service and learning that it would cost me alot (one might even say a ridiculous amount) to order the knives from them, I turned to Amazon. I soon discovered these Freud knives for about a third as much as Jet wanted for their knives (and half as much as Amazon wanted for Jet brand knives). I ordered, received, and installed them, and so far I have been happy with the purchase. I have jointed a fair amount of nicely figured, quarter sawn white oak and have no complaints so far. I am a big fan of Freud cutting tools and these seem to affirm my feelings.

I recommend these to all who want good quality knives at a reasonable price!

I have been running the Jet 16" planer for just two days and shredded six V-belts.

The machine came out of the box well tuned and solid. The manual was very detailed and well written except for an error in the V-belt tension adjustment section. Assembly was easy, although I could have used a 240 V plug at the end of the power cord.

My problems with the machine came when I started feeding in my rough cut Douglas Fir lumber. I have a large supply of wide stock (1x15 inches). A few hours into running my lumber I started to experience stalls and a lack of power. Looking over the machine showed a plume of fine black dust coming from the V-belt housing. The three belts were badly worn.

The motor is mounted on top of the blade and roller assembly. The only means of adjusting the belt tension is to move the heavy motor up and try to tighten the bolts, a two man operation. The bolts are easy to reach but dificult to accurateley adjust. There is no self adjustment and a large margin of error epecially as the belts heat up.

The next day after installing new belts and a call to Jet's tech support number I tried to get to work again. (The manual has an error in describing how to tighten the V-belts.) Sadly, the second days results were the same as the first with less that three hours of machine use the V-belts were shredded.

So far Jet has not been able to offer fix other than sanding down the cast belt drive wheels. Perhaps the wide stock is to much for machine? This is a new model to the market so I can't be sure if the issue is with my machine or the design.

However, I can't wait to find out, I will return the 16" Jet and look for a planer with a better drive system.

First off, this is a GREAT planer. Specific things:

It comes with a 4" dust hood that works well, as long as your dust collector is off the left side of the machine. Reversible, or even rear-exit, would have been nicer.

Second, this thing takes forever to assemble. I spent about 12 hours putting it together. Part of this is because it is incredibly heavy. If you have an engine hoist, forklift, or Neanderthal available, you'll be fine. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend trying to lift it with two people.. it really needs four.

I ended up removing the motor to lighten it up a little. That helped, but added a 3-4 hours to the assembly process.

Third, delivery was a little sketchy. I couldn't get it delivered for free without a liftgate. If you've got a loading dock, consider yourself lucky.

Fourth, why not include a power plug? It comes with a ~5 ft cord, no plug. Delta's Unisaw is twice the price, but it comes with a long enough cord and plug.

Random thoughts:

The stand is sturdy enough. I'm sure some people would prefer an enclosed stand, but it isn't currently available.

The infeed and outfeed rollers are very sturdy, and are adjustable for up/down and the angle of feed. This is helpful in case they are warped for some reason.

Conclusion- great planer, the assembly process should be simplified, and it is HEAVY! The bill of lading said 573 pounds; Amazon says 396 pounds. It's probably somewhere between the two.

I just got my new jet 16' planer and as in the previous review set up was somewhat time consuming, and the machine is very heavy. I have only run a few pieces of pine and maple stock through it with mixed results. My initial opinion is that this is tool that will take more fine tuning then I normally would have to do and more experience in order to get the results I expect. On the plus side this planer will really hog some lumber. I tested the power of the planer by running a 9 inch wide piece of hard maple (the widest I had on hand) and the planer never hesitated. The height adjustment is clear and easy to read and adjustment is quick and easy. One more feature that I am impressed with is the four handles that slid into the base. These handles were helpful when assembling the planer and later on when moving it around my shop. The mobile base is a must with the size limitation I have in my shop

I would have expected the factory set-up to be better. The blades were not parallel to the base, so I reset the blades with the jig. After resetting the blades (3 times with the same result), I found the jig set the blades 0.015" higher than the rear shoe, hence it would dig in at the end on the board. I had to compensate by shimming under the front of the rear shoe. Works great now.
P.S. The bonus bag is sweet...it's even big enough for my circular saw.

I like this tool but as previously said the jig to set the blades is off. This is critical as is any planer. My planer blades were about 0.5 mm off, above the rear plate,causing snipe at the exit of the cut even with pressure on the rear part of the handle. Rather than shimming the plate ,I chose to adjust the jig. The plastic is cast and is not true.I used a digital caliper and machinist square to mill the plastic base(use sand paper on a glass plate or even the rear plate of the planer) and stop and thru trial and error I was able to get the level correct. The jig setting is too long so the blades mount high with respect to the rear plate. This is an important adjustment and Makita did not do a good job on this.
I also have a hard time with the hard case in trying to fit everything in it.

I like this Makita, it's made in America.
Here are my opinion about it:
pro: solid, strong,double-edged tungsten carbide mini blades make smooth cuts,quick and easy blade changing
con: my only complaint about this is there's no gauge on depth setting dial.
A good tool to buy.

Most of the aspects of this planer are good except for "chatter". This has been a real problem for me with this planer. I can run something like a 1 1/2 inch oak cuting borad top and get NO "chatter" or dishing and then on the last pass get waves in the surface like a rough 2x12 at Home Depot. Powermatic has sent in a local expert that they hire and he did all the adjustments and declared all fine. When I ran a 7 foot board with less that 1/2 inch bow he then declared my problem as "operator error" for trying to run such bowed material. He has no answer as to why it would also do it on straigt material since he "didn't see it happen". My problem is you never know when it's going to show. Run a borad, smooth as glass, run again and it's full of ripples. This happens about 25% of the time. Plus, there was NO, NONE, NOTHIING AT ALL as to follow-up from Powermatic. Rest of my powermatic equipemnt has been GREAT. Get anything else but I'm very sorry I got this planer.

I'm not the poster of this review. Just wanted to let him know that the powermatic manuals have the 800 service number in the back of their manuals. Just in case anyone was concerned about this. Their customer service is outstanding

I gave this product 4 stars only b/c the review I was adding this to gave it 4 stars. I have not used this product.

I am General Contractor for Timber Frame construction projects. You can't beat the Amazon.com price with free shipping. Even Ebay prices used don't beat the price/performance of this machine.

The mechanics on the planer are good with excellent finish results, but I wish the infeed and outfeed roller tables were as heavy duty as the machine itself. We have planed hundreds of board feet of 6x8 and 4x6 lumber with outstanding results. I bought the 20 inch planer over the 15 inch so that we could plane 6x12 cedar timbers that were 12 feet long. For the first couple of runs we had to power plane by hand the surfaces to allow the Powermatic planer to feed the stock . . . it would hand up while infeeding even though we supported the ends.

On that note, I was sorely disappointed that the infeed and outfeed tables no only bend under the weight (250 lbs) but they also deform the roller mounts. We are going to have more solid supports for the custom infeed and outfeed tables built. If Powermatic simply added vertical bars to the ends of the infeed or outfeed tables that swing down to suppor the ends, I would give this tool 5 stars.

The installation and setup instructions are weak and Powermatic does not offer a tech support number in their paperwork, but we figured out most of the stuff. We still have a 1/2 inch bar with three lock washers left over . . . the price you pay.

Does this look like a great new product? Well it did to me too (notice past tense).

I bought two of these, one for infeed the other for outfeed. I had problems with the first board. With any significant load on the roller, the roller head would flop down exposing the ball bearing head. This happened no matter how hard I tightened the knob. When the board dropped rapidly like this as I was guiding the board past the blade of the bandsaw, it almost cost me some fingers.

Please note that these are rated for over 200 pounds, and I was resawing a board well under 100 pounds. I would rate this for no more than a 40 pound load.

Later that same day, the weld at the base of the roller head assembly broke partially, and tipped the head over at an angle ruining a good piece of lumber and several hours work.

If you try to use the ball bearings instead of the roller, the bearings have so much friction to them that the stand is prone to tipping over as soon as you move a board over the stand under load.

This tool is poorly designed and poorly made. It is unsafe and I would discourage anyone from buying it.

Helping hand II works great at first I was unsure to buy it cause of the reviews only 2 thats why I am telling you it really works well in a small shop try it. Thank you

The Tradesman 9970pp Helping Hand II Work Support is simply fantastic. It assembles in about a minute and its heavy case iron base makes this a very stable support. I like the fact that you can adjust the roller assembly to have one roller or flip the head and you have several roller for larger pieces of wood. I use mine all the time for both my table saw when I am cutting a piece of plywood or my miter saw when cutting trim. It is very well made and it is very easy to adjust the height.