Ehl65 Parallel stop any good?

[tomba26]

Hi all, new to the forum and first time Festool owner as of this weekend.....I have purchased the Ehl65 planer from my local stockist. ;D
It will be used primarily for light trimming work but I see the parallel stop is a little fragile looking, how does it perform when planing door bottoms for example when the planer is being held at 90 degrees? I tend to lie doors down flat on my workmate/trestle, set the parallel stop so that it runs on the top of the door holding the planer at 90 degrees so it planes the doors bottom (if that makes sense).
I know there is an angle stop available but to be honest it cheeses me off a little to have to buy it on top of the planer, so is the standard one ok in operation?
I have a few oak doors to plane towards the end of next week so it will get tried out then but I am wondering if I should bite the bullet and buy the angle stop beforehand.
Many thanks.

 

[honeydoman]

are you in the USA?  cuz I did not know the planner was ready yet for hear.  however.  I usually use ts55 and rail to trim bottoms of doors.  and I use the porter cable 426 door planner.  however , I am wanting to switch to the festool planer so I can attach to vac for crumbs clean up.  so I would think an edge guide would be worth it.  if one is available for it.

 

[Frank-Jan]

A parallell guide is more for planing rebates, keeping the planer parallell to the edge, to keep the planer at a fixed angle (90? in your case) you should use a bevelguide. (I do think it will help keeping the planer on the edge, (preventing it to drift down because of the weight))
I have no festool planers myself, nor do I have experience planing doors while they are laying flat (I stand the doors on their edge in a doorbuck for planing, and I use a makita 1100, which is  pretty heavy (good dustcollection though in combination with my CT and 36mm hose).
I too prefer the ts55 for doorbottoms, because if you use a planer, you have to flip the door to do the last bit from the other side to prevent tear out.

I looked at the accesories for the ehl65, but I can't even find a bevelguide for it (on the Dutch festool site), although the one for the ehl 85 might fit. I read an article by Gary Katz that if you want to use the ehl850 to plane a bevel on a door you have to modify it a bit to be able to use it from the right side of the door. (unmodified it only bevels one way, and you wouldn't be able so see your scribe line)

 

[joiner1970]

The guide that comes with it is ok for what you want to do but when I bought my EHL65 a year or more ago I got Festool to send me a new one because it wasnt square to the planer but the new one was just the same  ??? not very accurate but the planer is great. The parallel stop as others have said is for rebating depth control.

 

[tomba26]

Thanks for the replies all, sounds like it'll be ok for what I want.
For those of you using the TS55/75 saws for trimming doors, how do they perform when you just have a couple of mm to cut down, do you also trim the stiles with the saw? Is the finish ok or are you running over the door with a quick pass on the planer?
Oh, I'm in the UK (England) honeydokreg, for the time being at least, Canada is where I would love to be though.
Cheers all.

 

[Frank-Jan]

The TS performs great, even when going from nothing to 1.5 mm or so. Dustcollection isn't that good though if you have no material on the other side of the blade. It helps having a sharp blade in it, and taking it very slow at the end of the cut to prevent tearout.
For me the finish of the cut is good enough, I just round of the sharp edges with a pass of a blockplane and sandpaper. (For doors I use the universal blade on my ts55 instead of the 48 theeth blade that comes with it. (but if it's sharp it can be used to).

In general I don't use the TS for the stiles, only when I need to make a door out of a slab of 40 mm plywood.

I work in the Netherlands, and the doorframes are more solid than in places where they fit the doors into a rough opening, and shim the jambs,  (+- 60mm by 115mm), so they often need a bit of scribing. The TS only works for straight cuts.