Woodworker's Journal 2008-32-2, страница 68

TOOL REVIEW

straight-knife planers. In a home shop, this is a nice perk.

Powermatic's 15HH comes fully equipped with casters, chip hood, cast-iron tables and two-speed gearbox, but that dandy Byrd cutterhead boosts the sticker price to well over two grand. Still, if this is the last planer you ever buy, I'll bet you'll never regret spending that extra cash up front.

Steel City Tool Works

Model: 40250 Price: $1,349.99 Phone: 877-724-8665 Knives: 3 steel, conventional Planing Capacity: 15"W x 6'H Speed Settings: 16 or 20 FPM Overall Bed Length: 48" Average Snipe: .0006" Weight: 473 lbs

For more info on m the web: use our E*

QU IK-LINK

Cast-iron support tables provide stout and generous support for large stock.

Steel City 40250

Rounding out the test group is Steel City's 40250. It features a digital depth scale that reads in Imperial or metric and can be set up several ways, depending on how you want to monitor stock removal. I appreciated that Steel City kept the manual scale as well — it's located

on the column like the General, Powermatic and JET planers. It'll be helpful when the digital scale's battery eventually peters out.

This planer performed exceptionally well in testing. Snipe never exceeded .003", and it all but disappeared on many passes. Very impressive for a machine straight off the shipping skid. Chip debris whisked away neatly through the left-facing dust hood and 4" port. It has three conventional straight knives and comes with a knife-setting jig and base casters. Here's a tempting machine at a fair price.

Now that the Chips are Bagged Up...

It's time to pick the brightest star in this test. Although Powermatic's helical cutterhead is dreamy, JET deserves to be in the winner's circle for bringing quick knife-changing convenience and an affordable price to professional quality planers. The JWP-15DX earns the Woodworker's Journal "Best Bet" award. It should prove to be a dependable addition to your growing shop.

Top Three Reasons to Buy a Bigger Planer

You could buy several top-notch benchtop planers for the price of one 15" machine. Here are three good reasons to trade up:

tM More power: Benchtop planers I have universal motors, same as a router or circular saw. They draw high amperage on 110 volts, run hot and, for these reasons, will not last forever. They're also noisy, in case your family, neighbors or eardrums haven't reminded you lately. In contrast, these 15" planers have 3 HP, totally enclosed, fan-cooled induction motors, like a cabinet saw. An induction motor provides quieter, continuous horsepower instead of bursts of peak horsepower. Since it operates on 220 volts, it draws about half the amperage of your benchtop

planer, so you can actually plane down 500 or 1,000 board feet of hard maple without the motor glowing red. A bigger power plant will also allow you to take deeper bites to reduce stock thickness more quickly. These motors are made to operate all day, every day, to industrial standards.

2 More metal: Your benchtop planer weighs 100 pounds or less. At roughly four to five times that weight, these 15" planers are loaded with cast-iron and steel where it really counts. The head and column base castings, bed and support tables (in most cases) are all iron. Posts, cutterhead, gearing and bearings are oversized and made for demanding use. That heavy metal dampens vibration and keeps the planer bed properly

aligned regardless of where you set it or how heavy the stock is that passes over it. Your benchtop planer has similar components in much smaller and more delicate scale, but it doesn't hold a candle to the robustness of a production quality machine.

More capacity for the big stuff:

Sure, a 15" planer adds a couple more inches of planing width, but think of capacity in broader terms. These test machines provide around four feet of combined bed length, so they'll support long stock better. And, their mass allows you to feed in heavy planks without fear of tipping the machine over, like your benchtop planer might. Surfacing long, wide or heavy stock is simply not a problem here.

70

April 2008 Woodworker's Journal