Good: helical cutting head at this price point! 13" width capacity, 6" height capacity down to 1/8" inch, quick setup for repeat thickness runs, surprisingly quiet during full load, excellent chip extraction, essentially ready to use out of the box with little if any adjustment needed to parallel the support tables (they fold upwards when not in use resulting in very small foot print when unit is stored away), support tables are long, leaves a good finish, 5 year warranty.
Bad: single feed speed is too fast for some hard woods resulting in some minor tear-out; rotating the board for another pass helps but a slower feed speed would get rid of this problem entirely.
Overall: 13" helical cutter in a solidly built machine at an excellent price; looking forward to many years of service. Steel City Tool Works 40200H 13-Inch Planer with Spiral Cutterhead
I have had this planer for a few months and put a lot of hickory, hard maple, soft maple, and red oak through it. This is and upgrade for an older Dewalt 2 blade cutter head. I upgraded because I was tired of having to get blades sharpened frequently and tired of dealing with tearout from the coarser grain woods.
The planer came shipped in the in is own box with no problems. Once out of the box you will need to clean off some grease from table of the planer, but nothing to major. After the you attach the 4" dust collector port you are ready to go.
I did have to adjust the level of the infeed and outfeed table to eliminate snipe, but still have some on the first and last couple inches of the board. I know some people find snipe to be a big deal, I plan for it and just cut off the ends.
The first thing you notice when you first start using it is how quiet it is. This does not matter to me so much because I have a loud dust collector and I always use hearing protection. But it is significantly quieter then straight blade planers. The part that I am disappointed with is you still get a fair amount scallops and tearout from the coarser grain woods. I was under the impression that the spiral head was supposed to significantly decrease tearout or eliminate it. But I have not noticed a difference for from my older dewalt planer. I have tried taking lighter passes of 1/32 of and inch and changing the directional feed of the board but with no success. Maybe I had too high of expectations for this planer. It does have plenty of power to push through and species of wood at its 13" capacity. Dust collection catches about 95% of the chips, so nothing to complain about. We will just have to see how long the knives stay sharp for and how it is to change them. Will keep you posted.
I give it the three stars because I expected better result regarding tearout.
First, I don't know about the durability/longevity of this product, but I will say that I think in the long run this will be a machine that lasts for me. As many have pointed out, this is basically a Ridgid 13" planer with a spiral cutting head. However, the sides are all steel and overall the materials seem to be of a higher specification/quality than the Ridgid models. I carefully researched this machine and read lots of reviews before I finally bit the bullet and bought this unit. I'd considered the Delta and Dewalt portable models in the same price range ($600). The recent price drop on this Steel City unit really helped me make the final decision as well as the spiral cutting head. Many have commented about the "grease" around the cutter head and on one woodworking forum someone carped on endlessly about using Q-tips to clean the cutter head. I thought that seemed a little strange, so I was prepared to look for myself once the unit arrived. I removed the protective shroud around the cutter head and yes, there is a significant amount of grease on the head. In my opinion this is Cosmoline or some other rust inhibitor. Douse the head with some brake cleaner or do what I did: grab some soft lumber (like pine) and run it through until you collect a Shop Vac or two full of shavings. This coating really isn't as bad as some of the reviews. If you consider all of the bare steel and surface area that is exposed on this spiral cutter head, the rust inhibitor is necessary. The environment inside a shipping container from China to the U.S. is a corrosive one for machinery. I'm glad that Steel City's overseas supplier is taking this precaution. Put the Q-tips down and use some common sense, man.
Regarding the performance of this machine: I could not be happier! Adjusting the in-feed/out-feed tables did take some time and the bolts for this are inset too close to the base of the unit in my opinion. You'll need some good dexterity to get them just right. There is only one feed speed. I don't think 2 feed speeds would be useful for me, but maybe others work a whole lot faster on a planer than I do or have help on the out feed. I planed about 20 bf of 8-inch wide black walnut the other night from about 4/4 down to 1/2" thickness taking nice 1/32" swipes. This sucker could easily swipe up 1/16" on a pass, but I was so pleased with the surface at 1/32" that I just beamed from ear-to-ear and kept putting the stock back through to get to my final thickness. Did someone say I need a re-saw setup on a dedicated band saw? Ah yes---that would be nice. Had fun planing, but it is sad to see half of a board wasted.
Many of us really want a 15-20" floor-model planer with its own dedicated space in the "shop" and a 220V power supply. A lot of woodworking snobs will tell you not to even bother with these suitcase (portable) models. Let's get real. Most of us do woodworking in our garage and space IS an issue. How will this hold up under professional use? I have no idea, but then again I'm not going to abuse my tools like "employees" will. I built houses for a number of years and I can tell you even the best tool will fail when it is abused---apropos with ANY tool review you read and always worth considering. Overall I'm confident in giving this machine a 5/5 rating. - Planer'
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