A semi-portable thickness planer for my woodworking shop
Posted By RichC on September 27, 2020
When bragging that my latest sewing cart project had zero cost in it, I held off until the end of the post to mention that I was spending money and would post about that on Sunday. Well here it is: I bought 
my first planer; it’s a semi-portable DeWalt DW735, with the “X” option (extra set of blades and infeed and outfeed flip-down tables).
I grew up and used large industrial planers in the past (before there were portables), but could never justify adding a planer or a jointer to my woodworking shop (continue to use a Makita portable 3-1/4” power planer). Besides a thickness planer being
expensive, noisy, dusty and kind-of a pain to keep blades aligned and sharpened, they aren’t generally necessary if you’re buying dimensional material that has already been planed – it is what you find in big box stores (although rarely decent, always expensive and lacking in wood varieties).
A few things changed this for me:
- I’d like to reuse some Maple material for a couple of projects. I’ve salvaged these from my old type galley trays and might be able to use this high quality hard maple for this winter’s projects.
- I’m not getting any younger and would like to do more woodworking as I enter into my retirement years. Too many of us go without good tools or the right equipment only to buy later in life.
- I’d like a few nicer pieces of rough sawn, kiln dried hardwoods that aren’t overpriced. Something where the cost of lumber doesn’t exceed the cost of buying a piece of quality furniture at the store.
- I had a $125 credit at Amazon burning a hole in my pocket. Sure I could have told Brenda we’ll save it for Christmas presents … but then I didn’t tell her I had the credit.
- Finally, my friend Mark Jones has a planer in his new garage shop and I’m jealous (let’s see if he is still reading my blog)!
