Best Benchtop Planers: Reviews of the Top 5 Portable Planers

Best Benchtop Planers: Reviews of the Top 5 Portable Planers A benchtop planer is a very useful tool, it can save you a fortune on the cost of buying presurfaced lumber by allowing you to plane your own. That being said it does need to be kept in mind that there are some limitations to a benchtop planer. In an ideal world we would all have a heavy duty planer in our workshop, unfortunately most of don’t have the space or the money for this. That being the case a benchtop planer can be an ideal option. If you are going to buy a benchtop planer it is important to understand they work best when removing small amounts of wood on each pass. The result is that it is going to take a fair bit of time to plane each piece. Portable planers will also generally leave snipe and scallops on your work piece, this means that there will be some sanding required. The best planers will keep the amount of sanding required to a minimum but it will still be necessary. Things to Look for in a Benchtop Planer: Gauges and Stops: Easy to adjust gauges will make your life a lot easier. You are also going to want a planer that has preset stops to ensure that you don’t take off more wood than you intended. Self Indexing Blades: Blades that don’t self index are a pain to have to deal with so avoid a machine that doesn’t have this. These days the vast majority of planers have self indexing blades so this should not be a major issue. Dust Collection: There is no getting around the fact that a planer produces a lot of dust so make sure that the one you buy has an excellent dust collection system. Power: This is not as big of a deal as you would think it would be, all benchtop planers these days have plenty of power to get the job done. My Choice: My pick for the best benchtop planer is the Dewalt DW735. It is a bit on the pricey side however so for those on a budget the Wen 6550 is also an excellent option.