Festool Seeking Member Feedback on Tools

[Matthew Schenker]

Everyone,
I have just received word from Festool that they are looking for new ways to improve information about their products.

As a first example of this effort, they are looking for feedback on the HL850 planer.

Here is a quote from Christian Oltzscher's e-mail to me on the subject:
"Since it is hard to anticipate all questions customers might have, I thought it might be a good idea to ask the forum members, what their questions are regarding the HL. What do they want to know about the planer? What is important to them?"

The goal, it appears, is to use feedback from forum members to create better information in the catalog, on the Festool Web site, or other places.  Christian said that if this test effort with the HL works out, he would like to do something similar with other Festool tools.  It sounds like a great way for the company to begin addressing some of the concerns a lot of us have expressed about the need for better manuals, instructions, and basic descriptions.

So, let's hear from members!

Stay in touch,
Matthew

 

[TahoeTwoBears]

Good morning,

Larger pictures on all products. Better descriptors on the accessories, with perhaps useage being shown. Frequently, I discover by accident, what an accessory is for/does. Changes the whole outlook on the tool.

Mike

 

[Jesse Cloud]

Hey Matthew,
I don't know how helpful this will be, and it will certainly expose my ignorance, but here goes....

I don't really have any questions on the planer because I think (not sure) that I have no use for it.  I am a retired hobbyist building furniture (tables, chairs, casework, dressers, etc).  My understanding of the handheld planer is that it is for shaving wood off the edge of a workpiece such as a door.  I  have a good jointer and a handplane which do that quite well.  So I guess my question would be "are there any uses for a handheld planer in furniture making?"

By the way, I think Festool is doing a great job of improving information on products, especially Jerry and Rick's manuals - I read those both before and after a purchase!

 

[gkeas]

I would be far more inclined to puchase this unit if the table mount provided a much larger surface for jointing longer boards.  Don't know if this helps.

 

[richard.selwyn]

I would be far more inclined to puchase this unit if the table mount provided a much larger surface for jointing longer boards.  Don't know if this helps.

I think if you add a simple support fore and aft of the table mount it will help joint longer pieces - I saw it somewhere but have not done it myself as I have a jointer planer.  The Festool planer is very useful in some circumstances - especially the ability to rebate to considerable depths - the blade cuts flush to one side if you see what I mean.

 

[iggy07]

This is a fantastic idea! Not only is it likely to lead to tool and/or catalog improvements, but it creates a cooperative sense of community between the users and the factory, marketing, engineering, etc.

However, I question the choice of the planer for their first trial run. There may be good reasons why they are looking for that information now, but it certainly does not leap out as one of the more common tools in the collection. I'm with Jesse on that one.

The information provided by Jerry and Rick are enormously helpful. As a newbie, however, I am baffled that over the dozens of years these tools have been available, there is almost nothing written about them. If manuals are available in German, I haven't heard about them. I am marginally familiar with the standard table saw and compound miter, and more familiar with the circular and radial arm saws. The TS-55 is fantastic, but it is very different from these others. We can all read everyone raving about them, but then when we buy it and open the box . . . .    What did people do before Jerry's manuals? I wouldn't have a friggin' clue!

The fence is in the back, like the radial arm, but the saw moves from front to back, and rotates to pull the wood off the fence, rather than into the fence. Of course, the guide rail holds the material firmly in place, but how obvious would this be without written, or pictorial instruction? How did the Festool market get started in the first place? How did it evolve? Does everyone in Germany just 'know' these things? Do they have local training classes?

Please don't take this as being too critical -- I love the tools, but as described, every time I hear a new application 'mentioned', it opens up a world of new possibilities. This leads me to believe there are dozens of similar situations I just never hear about. (And I wouldn't be hearing about any of these if I were not a FOG member!) For example, when I read Spielmans' Router Handbook, I realize it would take me years to learn a fraction of what is possible. But at least I have an idea what is included in the 'router universe'. In contrast, I feel a large void in the Festool arena.

More info! More training opportunities!

Onward!

Ed Gallaher

 

[The Woodentop]

This is a fantastic idea! Not only is it likely to lead to tool and/or catalog improvements, but it creates a cooperative sense of community between the users and the factory, marketing, engineering, etc.

However, I question the choice of the planer for their first trial run. There may be good reasons why they are looking for that information now, but it certainly does not leap out as one of the more common tools in the collection. I'm with Jesse on that one.

The information provided by Jerry and Rick are enormously helpful. As a newbie, however, I am baffled that over the dozens of years these tools have been available, there is almost nothing written about them. If manuals are available in German, I haven't heard about them. I am marginally familiar with the standard table saw and compound miter, and more familiar with the circular and radial arm saws. The TS-55 is fantastic, but it is very different from these others. We can all read everyone raving about them, but then when we buy it and open the box . . . .    What did people do before Jerry's manuals? I wouldn't have a friggin' clue!

The fence is in the back, like the radial arm, but the saw moves from front to back, and rotates to pull the wood off the fence, rather than into the fence. Of course, the guide rail holds the material firmly in place, but how obvious would this be without written, or pictorial instruction? How did the Festool market get started in the first place? How did it evolve? Does everyone in Germany just 'know' these things? Do they have local training classes?

Please don't take this as being too critical -- I love the tools, but as described, every time I hear a new application 'mentioned', it opens up a world of new possibilities. This leads me to believe there are dozens of similar situations I just never hear about. (And I wouldn't be hearing about any of these if I were not a FOG member!) For example, when I read Spielmans' Router Handbook, I realize it would take me years to learn a fraction of what is possible. But at least I have an idea what is included in the 'router universe'. In contrast, I feel a large void in the Festool arena.

More info! More training opportunities!

Onward!

Ed Gallaher

You make it sound like a Quaker organisation. Please don't lose sight of the fact that Festool don't want to be your friend, they just want your money!

Nice as the tools may be!

 

[chrisrosenb]

I would be far more inclined to puchase this unit if the table mount provided a much larger surface for jointing longer boards.  Don't know if this helps.

I think if you add a simple support fore and aft of the table mount it will help joint longer pieces - I saw it somewhere but have not done it myself as I have a jointer planer.  The Festool planer is very useful in some circumstances - especially the ability to rebate to considerable depths - the blade cuts flush to one side if you see what I mean.

For boards too long to joint with the table mount. I clamp them on edge using the MFT & clamping elements & use the planer hand held.

 

[Lou Miller]

I think its great that Festool wants our feedback. However, I also really question why they are starting with the planer? Maybe if they had asked for feedback before on the the TS saws, they might have heard a lot of our comments on the tipping issue when beveling. Now Makita seems to have beaten them to the punch on that.

My point is, the planer isn't a tool that a lot of us will consider a must have. The saws, MFTs, sanders and routers just make far more sense to me as a starting point. Why not ask our feedback on tools that many of us consider to be must haves?

I own a planer that is a different brand. I might use it once or twice a year at the very most. For my purposes (fitting doors usually), the TS saws are almost always a better option. I encounter a lot of different things everyday due to the type of work I do, yet I really have no use for a hand held planer.

 

[Eli]

Maybe they're asking because they're trying to figure out how to sell more planers. Everyone already bought everything else.

 

[Lou Miller]

Maybe they're asking because they're trying to figure out how to sell more planers. Everyone already bought everything else.

Good point. However, a hand held planer is something that you either need or you don't. Doesn't really matter what they do to them, if I don't need one, I'm still not going to buy one because they made some great improvement to it. In the end, its just not a very useful tool to most people. I can think of hundreds of pros like myself that don't have one at all.

Now when they get around to seeing the light on impact drivers, I'll pay very close attention. Alas, they seem to have no interest in impacts. Shame really... here in the US, they'd go over quite well.

 

[Eli]

I'm so with you. I wish they made an impact driver. I've got a decking job end of next month and it's either Makita or Bosch for that one.

The alternate planer heads look interesting, but definitely not a bread and butter tool. If you need a (here it's many hundred dollars) expensive substitute plane head to make a beam look rustic, the least of your worries is cost. I only ever used a hand power plane to trim doors, and I wouldn't dream of it with the TS55 and a rail as an alternative.

I wonder if the deep rebate feature on the plane is used a lot by window fitters. I noticed that here in Australia, a lot of carpenters shopfit the window faming before the glazier comes in, as opposed to dropping in prefab factory cased windows.

 

[Brice Burrell]

  I agree with Lou. I have a non-Festool planer, but it hasn't been out of its case since I bought the TS55. Sorry if this is getting too far off track.

 

[Tinker]

I have the planer.  so far, I have not used it for planing finished lumber/wood.

I do use it a lot for making boards (short) out of fire wood and short logs.

I either split the logs/firewood down to a size I can handle on the bandsaw.  Once I have one side split or otherwise shaped to something near flat, and it usually is quite far of with first cuts done mostly by eye, I then clamp or shore up on the MFT or horse.  I attack with the hand planer until one side is flat.    I then run the log thru the thickness planer make two sides parallel and then i start squaring up with bandsaw. That third side is generally a whole lot closer to flat and square ten the first was and i finish that to fairly close by hand.  If id does not come out close and i figure it will take considerable effort to flatten it, i square it with the hand planer.  i don't get too particular on that third edge as somewhere along he line, i will be slicing it into thinner pieces. (3/4-1/2-3/8-1/4) that is when I do a better job of squaring up each piece to dimension. 

For what i use the hand planer for so far, i suppose just about any brand woud work fine.  this is the only one i ever used and at first, i was not comfortable and spent a lot more time with the old arstrong powered hand planes for flattening.  Now i am used to the (HL850) power hand planer, I do like it and it does save me a lot of time.  i'm not confident enough to put it to a final edge planing.  For the most part, the ATF with sharp blade does a fine finishing job on edges.  On faces, once I have done one side flat with the 850, the other side gets done with the statioary thickness planer. If i need better than that, the old hand smoother, jointer or scraper planes do the job for me.

Tinker

 

[greg mann]

I think a saw a photo of Jerry Work using the planer handheld with the jointer fence attached to trim or bevel a table edge after assembly. IIRC, it was on his website. While I am not sure what he was actually doing it looked a little out-of-the-box. My guess is that the planers are a bit more popular in Europe because they might be looked upon as problem solvers in situations where it doesn't occur to us here in the States to use them. A methods of work type of issue, so to speak. Similar to Eli's comment about the Aussies. It Festool can open up problem solving possibilities they just might sell more of them.

David Marks used the 850 to fair a piece of furniture in one of his segments. It appeared to make short work of the task and I have to admit it probably would not have occurred to me to use it that way. I have used mine to knock the high spots off warped boards to make them more presentable to the jointer and it was excellent at that task. It sure beat whacking away with a handplane because the grain was very squirrelly. I guess you could have called it an electric scrubplane. I remember thinking that I needed to keep it in mind more often for problem solving situations.

As I go to post this I see Tinker has been living in a parallel universe. ;D

 

[clintholeman]

I have the 850 and love it.  I rarely use my hand planes anymore.  Only for finishing tops of tables, dressers, etc.

I made a couple of extensions for the bed which allows me to join some pretty long pieces.  I use the angle stop for truing ends/edges and the table top mount as well.

Combined with the saws, I have never felt a need for anything else - except perhaps, another MFT.  ;D.

If there was one improvement I would make it would be to incorporate the standard Plug-It power cord.

If you can't tell, I really like it.

 

[Tom Wales]

I also have the 850 with table. There are occasions when installing cabinits that having my planer is GREAT!!
Instead of beltsanding (which works well, if dusty even connected to my ct33 ) the scribe edge, the planer makes quick work of it. Same thing with scribing backsplashes. Doesn't chip the formica. Then depending on how brave I am, a quick lick the belt sander and the backsplash is done.(brave and I take it right to the line :'( ) With the table and the planer (now a mini jointer ) there has been several times when it has bailed me out. Yes, I may not use it often, but when I need it , I love that girl... : I wouldn't give it back if they refunded the full price.
Tom in Soldotna

 

[Dan Uhlir]

re. the planer I don't have one, for myself it was down the list of must haves after saw,  table,router, sanders, jigsaw, vac etc. I'm guessing I'm not alone, I'm sure it's a viable tool,however, there's ten others minimum I'd pick first, plus it's really six hundred bucks minimum when you buy the bench. So after buying ten tools it's tough to go another six bones for a planer.Thanks for letting me share. peace dan

 

[pingvinlakrits]

I use the EHL65 one hand planer and it is - surprisingly - one of the few items I would not want to be without.
I say (err... ...write) surprisingly as one year ago I had never used a planer nor had I any idea of what I would be using it for. Then the need came and I got to try out a few different ones on site when working with window restorations etc. I chose Festool, and the EHL 65 over the 850 as the EHL 65 is a true one hand planer and very lightweight. The tablemount works great as well.

Also I'd like to mention that the Festool is considerably better than the competition in this field: I have tried Makitas planer, DeWalts planer, two "no name" planers and the latest Bosch 26-82 which I owned briefly but sold to a colleague who only uses planers sparingly.

Festools planer is lighter than the competition and has significantly less vibration - the newer Bosch was a slight letdown in that regard.

 

[Christian93117]

Hello,

Thank you for all your feedback.

What I'd like to get out of this post in addition to all the feedback is a list with questions you have about the HL850 planer and its use.

What are your top 5 questions on the HL850 you would ask if you had an HL850 expert to talk to?

Thank you.

Christian