The simple joys of a planer
I have a Ridgid TP-1300 planer that I picked up used for a pretty good deal. It is my current favorite power tool. It does all the things a good power tool should.
First, it pretty much performs as advertised. You can simply crank to a given cutoff depth, it shows the depth right there on the ind-i-cut meter, and feed the sucker in. Voila! That much is gone. It’s also got standard stops for 1/2″, 3/4″, etc., and an absolute-thickness reading that’s easy to adjust.
Second, it’s been designed with idiots like me in mind. There’s handly little stowage spaces for extra blades, a magnetic blade holder, wrenches, and everything else you need for regular maintenence–and it’s all included with the planer itself at no extra charge. I guess they now throw in a stand too, but mine didn’t come with one (at the price I paid who cares). I built one out of 2x4s and a couple of lockable casters that’s better than the one they provide anyway. But I digress.
Third, it fails gracefully. This is critical for me, since I fail often, and so must my tools. When you accidentally tell it to shave 1/4 inch off a 13″ wide hard maple slab, it slows down, and eventually the rollers stop feeding while the blades keep spinning. You can turn it off, raise the thing up, berate yourself, and set things right with no major harm done. In fact, if you try to take off more than the max allowed, the wood simply won’t fit in the opening.
Fourth, it does good work despite operator stupidity. Unless you’re dealing with LOOONG boards, you just don’t get snipe (the extra divot at the end of a long board). And if you support the board, or set the snipe-lock, you don’t even get it then. It’s really hard to feed the wood in in a way that makes the planer upset–at an angle, diagonally, it’s all good.
Finally, and most importantly… planing is awesome. There is no immediate gratification in woodworking like taking something that looks like a the mutant offspring of a fuzzy caterpiller and a railroad tie and discovering it’s flame maple with a burl inclusion. Yes, this happened to me last week. I mean, it’s truly incredible that you can reveal such spectacular beauty from beneath what is in fact the rotted carcass of a dead plant. But the point is, power tools do work. Great power tools do VOODOO MAGIC. This is a great power tool.
So go get yourself a nice planer. Not the Ryobi, the dust collector is flimsy plastic. But try it out with some mystery rough-cut lumber from the bottom of your local sawyer’s wood pile. You’ll thank me for it.
(Astute readers wonder why I am praising a Ridgid planer when I recently steered readers away from that very same brand. Actually, that’s incorrect. Astute readers will read that I got it *used*, from the pre-Ridgid-went-to-seed era, and will not be asking stupid questions.)
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