Festool or Bosch hand planer

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paulhtremblay

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I know this forum is the best place for objective advice.

Kidding aside, in the not too far future I may purchase a hand planer. I will use it for small things, like fitting the back into a cabinet, planing flat Miller (through) dowels, flattening edge trip around plywood panels, installing doors in my house. Eventually I will make a plywood table, made my gluing a bazillion pieces of plywood on face so that the edges form the top of the table. I will definitely have to plane this flat.

Normally I do not mind paying extra for a Festool, but the Festool 850 planer is literally 4 times as much as the non Festool top of the line planer, a Bosch. $600 is so much for a tool I will use only occasionally. The Bosch gets mostly 5 star reviews on Amazon, except for the 1 star reviews, which all have the same complaint: the sole plates of the Bosh do not sit flat and produce an uneven cut.

If the price between the two tools were even close (say that the Festool were only twice the price of the Bosch), I would certainly pick the Festool.

Anyone have experience using one or both of these tools?
 
paulhtremblay said:
I know this forum is the best place for objective advice.

Kidding aside, in the not too far future I may purchase a hand planer. I will use it for small things, like fitting the back into a cabinet, planing flat Miller (through) dowels, flattening edge trip around plywood panels, installing doors in my house. Eventually I will make a plywood table, made my gluing a bazillion pieces of plywood on face so that the edges form the top of the table. I will definitely have to plane this flat.

Normally I do not mind paying extra for a Festool, but the Festool 850 planer is literally 4 times as much as the non Festool top of the line planer, a Bosch. $600 is so much for a tool I will use only occasionally. The Bosch gets mostly 5 star reviews on Amazon, except for the 1 star reviews, which all have the same complaint: the sole plates of the Bosh do not sit flat and produce an uneven cut.

If the price between the two tools were even close (say that the Festool were only twice the price of the Bosch), I would certainly pick the Festool.

Anyone have experience using one or both of these tools?
Click to expand...
[size=12pt]
Pitty the Festool EHL65 is NAINA, because from what you describe it would better suit your needs than the 850.
 
Hello paulhtremblay - The 850 is a fantastic planer, but of the jobs you want it for, it would only really be suitable for one of them - fitting doors. Certainly wouldn't use it for flushing off timber edge/lipping, or flushing off through dowels. Wouldn't use a standard power planer for either of those jobs.
Lincoln.
 
Untidy Shop said:
[size=14pt]

Hi again.

Linbro's reply reminded me that for flush cutting dowels you may wish to consider -

http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=32928&cat=1,42884

which is excellent.
Click to expand...

    Yes, those Veritas flush cut saws are very good. I have the double edged one. And was thinking just yesterday that  I should order a second one for the portable tool set.

Seth
 
First Id like to say, I dont know much about the Bosch planer. With that being said heres my take

IMO,

It depends what are going to use the planer for. General planing etc, yea go with the bosch,

However,

The festool 850 has a full length fence you can use to plane doors, it has a bench attachment for jointing boards, it can rabbit/ dado, it has various heads that can be used to get different effects, such as the undulating head that gives a rustic look.
Not to mention awesome dust collection.

 
I have an old Bosch (green) planer. It gets very little use, and as such I have no intention of replacing it with a Festool one; I simply couldn't justify the expense. I honestly can not remember when I last used it, it's probably over a year ago...

It does the job perfectly well, and I've fitted it with a plug-it. It also accepts the festool hose without any modifications, too!
 
With all of the power tools I own or have owned, I've never been motivated to purchase a power planer. I've just never seen the use for one for the things I do. If I *did* purchase one, I'd likely be like jonny round boy and use it maybe once a year. And as Linbro said, it's not a good match to 2 out of the 3 things you posted that you'd use it for.

The Festool one is obviously nice (the nicest), but if you really feel that you need one I'd strongly consider the Bosch. I suspect it will do more GATHERING dust than CREATING dust in your shop, so why spend ANY more than you need to on a tool that won't see much use?

Personally, I'd be searching Craigslist for one. Since it's a very specialized tool, there's a good chance that someone else had the 'hots' for one but subsequently realized that they don't use it and now want to sell it. And, unlike a Festool product, the Bosch can likely be purchased for about HALF of new.
 
WOW,

Yea  bought mine used. It was hardly used by the original owner.

i dont use mine a heck of a lot. But when I need it,its there.
 
I have the Bosch planer.  I find the dust collection works well, but usually use it without in coarser situations.  I have moved to sizing doors with a track saw - very accurate - and for scribe work a belt sander or block plane.  The chance of snipe on a power planer is too great for me to chance as a finished pass.  So mostly I use the power plane to correct framing, level plates, or in the case last week joint my cut along the top of some ICF forms.  In seven years I have yet to flip the blade.  It's a useful tool, but not used often. 
 
The Festool plane is quieter and makes a nicer surface with it's skewed blade.
It's also better balanced and much easier to handle than it's large size suggests.
The ability to depth adjustment on the fly is unique and very useful.
The infeed table on the Festool is very good.

Bosch has a few models. One of the Bosch has an infeed table that sits on an inclined plane.
That is the only one I'd consider. The others are adjusted by compressing sponge rubber around a round post, not as stable. The Festool infeed table also compresses rubber but it has much wider and more stable guide rails to keep it co-planar to the outfeed table.

The Festool plane chassis is the outfeed table. That is, the motor and all the rest of the tool are attached to the large casting that is the outfeed table. This is what makes the Festool feel so robust. The problem with this is that since the blade keys into the spindle and is not adjustable, the motor mount would have to be adjustable to compensate for wear of the cast aluminum outfeed table. I don't think the motor mount is adjustable. If that is the case, eventually the outfeed table will be below the cutter and all your cuts will be convex (unless you figure out a way to compensate).

The Bosch outfeed table might not be properly adjusted but as Microsoft used to say, "that's a feature". The outfeed table on all the Bosch models is just a plate screwed to the plastic housing. Sounds wanky but you can remove the plate and shim it to perfection.
 
I have no experience with either planer. I have the Dewalt. Not sure what model as others have said it's not something I use often it is handy for a lot of stock removal on the stiles of door. Then I still need to use the hand plane to get a good even fit. Would never use a sander. The likes of flushing the dowels best and easiest way is either a flush saw or simply a block plane or a nice sharp chisel and pare it off. Also for your ply table top I wouldn't use a planer I would if available use a thickness sander or just use a half sheet sander. What you tend to find is electric planers are ok as long as what you are planning is not wider than the blades any wider it is very difficult to avoid train tracks. You can avoid with hand planes as when the blade is sharpened you put a slight camber on the blade
 
574553 20% Planer HL 850 E in T-LOC Systainer $615.00 $492.00

There's one 850 on the recon sale now!

Nab it
 
I own the 850, and I love it, and own all the accessories for it as well. However, it does seem like overkill based on your current needs as you posted them.
For Miller Dowels, I use a Japanese non-set saw to cut them down ,and sand or touch with a hand plane as needed.
I bought my 850 used, as I didn't want to pay the 'new' price either, so like Seth posted, used or Recon sale could be where you would pick up any remaining 65 planers that are left, or just get a used Bosch or Festool off Craigslist or eBay like WOW talked about.
 
If you can wait a few days I may be able to offer a comparison test, I own and have used the bosch planer for several years now and have used it quite a bit, at least once or twice a month. However I have a job starting that found a need for the rustic heads of the Festool planer so I just ordered one on monday from amazon and it should be arriving today. I will probably be taking it into the shop this weekend and putting it through some scrap and getting a feel for it before it goes to the job site, I could do a side by side and give you some feedback on sunday if you want. For what it is worth the bosch has been a very good planer for my business although I really only use it on site since I have a large stationary jointer in the shop. I did order the base to use the Festool as a mini jointer on site. I am hoping to use it to resize cabinet doors on site. I do a lot of inset cabinetry and with the fluctuation of humidity with the seasons up here in Maine, I often have to adjust and refit the doors after they aclimate to the house.

Adam
 
You cannot compare a bosch planer with the 850 as the 850 is a multi tool and an engineering masterpiece, try comparing your bosch to a 65 as this is more in line with the tasks you are wanting to do with a planer, you could say the Festool PL 245 is hideously expensive, 3 times the price of the 850 but again it is designed to do tasks a 850 is not
 
Since the 850 has been brought up, I've got a question about the 850 I picked up in last years recon sale.  The blade shouldn't be below the rear plate should it?  Is it possible to adjust that?  I've seen discussions on adjusting the front plate, but not the rear.
 
Pixel, for starters both of the other two planers you mentioned are not available in the U.S. at this time as the 65 has been discontinued. In regards to the added functionality of the 850 I would say that just acts as points in its favor in the comparison. It was that functionality that has caused me to order one. But I still expect it to perform well as a planer against the Bosch. My tools pay my bills and I give them a hard life. If the 850 is half as good as it appears to be then I am sure it will have a home in my trailer. But I see no reason not to compare it to the Bosch in simple planing tasks as I fully expect it to perform those as well. I ordered it not because I need a hand planer but because I need "that" hand planer with the added heads. The original poster may not need that, they may just need to shave the odd door or so once a year.

I do agree that the 850 is hardly an average hand planer with all its options but I think it can be compared. I have high hopes it will blow the Bosch out of the water and this weekend I intend to find out.
 
MaineShop; I cannot comment on a bosch planer, never owned or used one but being a bosch then it will be what it says, "a planer".
The 850 on the other hand is as I said an engineering masterpiece and i can assure you that once you get yours and have used it for a couple of years as I have than you will never even look at another planer (unless of course the PL 245 arrives on your shores) the spiral blade is a dream and there are a million uses for the unlimited rebate depth, I recently used mine with one of the profiling heads to form a scroll pattern on plinth and people did not believe that you could create a 170mm deep plinth with detailing from a hand held planer. My one piece of advice to you is buy the full size fence, you really can square timber with this set up
 
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