Craftsman Professional 13 in. Bench Top Planer
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Craftsman Professional 13 in. Bench Top Planer Reviews


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3.43 of 5 view all 14 reviews
Rating Summary | 64% of reviewers recommend (9 out of 14)

“Thoughtful features on quality benchtop planer”

Craftsman Professional 13 in. Bench Top Planer — 

To provide some background, I used two other bench-top models just before purchasing the Craftsman 13" planer. I rented the DeWalt 13" planer to re-surface reclaimed cedar fence boards for a new fence. It was miserable. Both ends of the boards had snipe. The cutterhead kept dropping while cutting (the vibration rotated the side mounted handle easily). The boards were chipped up by the blades regardless of speed or depth of cut and it didn't feed well. To be fair, it could have been abused as a rental and maybe it takes some time to figure out how to use it, but at best it obviously had some issues as it ages. I exchanged it for a never used Makita 12" planer. It was much lighter and didn't have 2 speeds or three blades like the DeWalt but it cut smoothly and it was relatively quiet. It didn't feed boards well. I had to drag them through leaving small marks when the board stopped while I moved from the front, pushing the board, to the back, pulling the board. It also left shavings everywhere, but neither issue was a big deal. I was so impressed with the cutting ability I went to buy one. However, I had Sears gift certificates and they didn't carry that model so opted for the Craftsman 13" planer instead. Not knowing how it would perform I was hoping it would match up to the Makita. The first pass on the Craftsman was a pleasant surprise. It fed the board easily (I didn't need to push or pull it), cut smoothly and did not snipe the board. It took a little while to get the hang of the dust collector using garbage bags but 2 lighter weight bags work well (they don't blow off or explode as one bag would). It kept the area very clean and the chips were already bagged. The planer has other nice features the other planers do not. The ability to manually lock the cutterhead eliminated snipe on a 6' length of green 4x6 doug-fir. The fold down extensions helped keep the material level while feeding it and the rollers helped it roll through smoothly. The ability to "automatically" raise and lower the cutterhead without having to manually turn the handle made it easier to switch between different lumber thicknesses. I would recommend the Craftsman 13" planer to anyone looking for a great quality benchtop planer with thoughtful features.

Craftsman Professional 13 in. Bench Top Planer

is recommended by GreenwoodGuy
Posted on Aug 05, 2007
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