Reply To: Benchtop planer
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Ed,
You answered your own question. How deep a cut a lunchbox planer will take depends on the width of cut and hardness of wood. Cut your stock to size before you dimension the thickness. You already know that also.
All lunchbox planers share a limiting feature, and that’s the plug you stick in the wall outlet. A 110v 15 A circuit gives you 1650 watts of power no matter the design of the planer, and effectively you can figure maybe half that with the universal motors on those machines. If you have the extractor, stereo, shop light, and hot plate for your tea on the same circuit, expect poorer results.
Take solace In the concept that even the poorest lunchbox planer will carve up wood faster than you can by hand.
If you need more production I refer you back to my first statement. Open your wallet and get a 220v high amperage unit that can handle more work. You don’t want a lunchbox planer. You will of course need the lines circuitry to feed that beast.
How short a piece you can put into the planer depends on the distance between the infeed and outfeed rollers. Measure and add a couple inches.
My planer surprisingly will do down to 9” with light cuts, and I’ve done hand plane blanks to that size. Ymmv, but you can sandwich a short piece between longer pieces and you might do better.
As to snipe, it depends on a lot of things, like how well you have adjusted the infeed and outfeed tables ( get infeed and outfeed tables) how well you installed the blades, and how carefully you feed the stock, and how sharp the blades are. Dull blades beat up wood, they don’t cut it.
But one thing I will say from 50+ years of woodworking is that all planers have some snipe, it’s just less noticeable on some machines. The 735 has a reputation of being one of the best because it has four screws that raise and lower the head instead of the two most lunch box planers have.
If someone tells you their planer has no snipe it tells you more about their standards than it does the planer.
You will need to scrape , plane, or sand any wood that comes out of a planer to get a finished surface.
And you can get better performance out of a planer by learning how to tune it, just like a Bailey hand plane.
This fellow has a very good explanation of snipe issues and how to deal with them, and features the 735, one of the planers you mentioned
Hope that helps.