HL 850 planer review

[Leo95se]

Man, I really wanted to like this. Bought the 36mm hose and all. I’m working on a walnut project and gave it its first go by trying to plane out a middle section of a board.

Started easy- 1/32”.

The chips. More like strands of wood fiber that birds would be thrilled to have for a nest. They clogged the exhaust port. They clogged the hose. They clogged my cyclone. Then after all was clogged, they shot out of the front of the planer. Everywhere.

Ok, so I decided user error. Spent 2x longer cleaning up the mess than I did with the 10 passes making it.

Round 2. More mess. Caught it this time.

The planing: again likely user error. I found it amazingly hard to set a flat plane across the board. A slight overlap and the pass becomes uneven. A slight miss too wide and you miss a section. Attempt to pass over the missed section and it lowers the 2 sides of it along with it.
Now if you’re taking one long pass it does amazingly well. But any passes wider than the planer and I really struggled.

Any overlap causes uneven cuts. Any misses cause uneven cuts. Very frustrating. It’s clearly a workhorse and I regret I suppose I’m not skilled enough to use it. So, I’m returning it.

 

[luvmytoolz]

I would persevere myself, the HL850 is the best planer you'll ever get your hands on I reckon.

But this spiral insert cutterhead from CSP Tooling for the HL850 will make it an incredible beast:

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

I put this head in mine and get small chips now and amazing DOC and finish results. Couldn't recommend it high enough.

 

[derekcohen]

Hi Leo

I am trying to make sense of this. I've not used the HL 850, but have the smaller EHL 65 E ...



... and use this with the smaller hose.

My use is to clean up salvage boards before they go on my jointer-planer. It is not for finishing boards or panels (although I have used mine to flatten slabs prior to using a ROS). For smoothing generally, I use hand planes.

My experience with hand planes tells me that the depth of cut you have is likely to be too great. I would halve it. From the sound of things, you have deep tracks as a result. I would also not plane across the grain with narrow sections. Too tippy and little reference. This is only a strategy for wide panels. Ideally, before a plane hits a surface, you use a straight edge to determine where the high spots are, and remove these first. Then you can plane with the grain to achieve a flat surface.

The issue with a power planer which is narrower than the board/panel you are planing is that the cutter is not cambered, as with a hand plane, and the edges will dig in and cut tracks. Overlapping cuts help here, but yours are so deep as to unbalance the power plane.

Give it another go.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Michael Kellough]

Derek explained it and you saw it with your own eyes. The HL 850 is the best tool of this type, which really only excels at working down stock that is narrower than the blade. Surfacing an area wider than the blade is very difficult, but reasonable results are not impossible.

If I were you (unless the return window is closing very soon) I’d experiment more. Dial down the depth and try cutting in various diagonal patterns across wide stock until you get into the sander ballpark.

 

[Leo95se]

Derek and Michael thank you both- you’re spot on and this aligns with my limited experience. FWIW 1/32 is the min cutting depth.
The ability to (not) manage tracks well, and the amount of havoc it’s producing in wood chips doesn’t make it worth it for me, right now.
My hope was using it for rabbets and with the rustic heads would prove valuable. As a point of humor after I got fed up I grabbed my grinder with carving disc and solved the problem in 30 seconds
Maybe I’ll hold onto it. I mean, it’s a festool!

 

[leakyroof]

I would persevere myself, the HL850 is the best planer you'll ever get your hands on I reckon.

But this spiral insert cutterhead from CSP Tooling for the HL850 will make it an incredible beast:

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

I put this head in mine and get small chips now and amazing DOC and finish results. Couldn't recommend it high enough.

Thanks for this info!!! Never never these heads existed…

 

[luvmytoolz]

@Leo95se The planer should be adjustable from zero DOC to around 3.5mm. Once you get used to it you'll find it a breeze to use and adjust the depth on the fly. It's very ergonomic and surprisingly good for one handed shaping too.

 

[luvmytoolz]

Thanks for this info!!! Never never these heads existed…

I can't believe how good the one I have is. And dirt cheap too considering the very high quality. Aside from adding heaps more grunt to easily cut deep into really hard timbers, it's also a little more quiet in operation unless I'm mis-remembering.

This video shows it doing some deep planing on Blackbutt which is a notoriously hard timber that loves to blunt tools:

 

[derekcohen]

I would persevere myself, the HL850 is the best planer you'll ever get your hands on I reckon.

But this spiral insert cutterhead from CSP Tooling for the HL850 will make it an incredible beast:

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

I put this head in mine and get small chips now and amazing DOC and finish results. Couldn't recommend it high enough.

I have one of these for my EHL 65 E. It has not yet been installed as I have a few spare couple of standard blades, and paint-covered Jarrah posts to strip. However ... while the cutters on the "spiral" insert run on a spiral-looking fitting, the cutting edges face forward rather than at an angle. There is no shear cut here, only multiple, smaller, segmented cuts. By comparison, the inserts of my Hammer A3-31 are clearly angled (just replaced the original inserts after 12 years) ...





By contrast, the straight (that is, non-segmented) original blade does do a shear-cut ...



Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[semenza]

I have the 850. Never had that issue. Don't think I ever planed walnut with it so maybe it's the wood?

Never had any clogging even with deeper cuts unless I used the D27 hose ( or any hose that fits inside the port as opposed to over), or forgot to flip the port lever to the correct side.

Seth

 

[rst]

I had too tear out 12’ of my kitchen wall after discovering water damage when replacing the roofing with standing seam and insulated subbase. This was in my kitchen which has a shed roof peaking at 17’. The ceiling is sprayed texture that I applied 33 years ago. Needless to say I didn’t want to disturb the finish. In order to make an angled support for the ceiling I made two angled edge 2x6 supporting the carpeted 2x12 that went against the ceiling. Sorry, long build up to short explanation. I cut the angles with my 850 using 50mm hoses as I have 4. I had no chip clogs this way. I had originally tried using the bag but that was ridiculously irritating. The whole apparatus was held up with adjustable steel posts and worked for the few days needed to replace the walls.

 

[Cheese]

Just noticed that CSP offers both a spiral cutter and a helical cutter for the HL 850. I wonder how much difference there is between them?

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

Festool HL850 Planer Real Shear Helical Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Real Shear Helix Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

@Leo95se the owners manual states that the chip size is continuously variable from 0 to 3.5mm.

 

[Leo95se]

I’m going to find a project today and give it another try. Im intrigued to see wood type and grain direction results. Thank you everyone for motivating me to experiment!

 

[usernumber1]

the only time i had chips like that was when i planed plywood

my thoughts are to use the electric planer same as the hand planer. if you are getting chips like that with a hand planer you will soon adjust whatever is causing them, because it's not an easy thing and your knife clogs constantly
wrong grain direction would be my best guess

 

[onocoffee]

Speaking of Festool hose that can't keep up...

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2083550525725215/?fs=e&mibextid=wwXIfr&fs=e

 

[luvmytoolz]

Just noticed that CSP offers both a spiral cutter and a helical cutter for the HL 850. I wonder how much difference there is between them?

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Spiral Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

Festool HL850 Planer Real Shear Helical Cutterhead

Festool HL850 Planer Real Shear Helix Cutterhead for machine upgrade

www.csptooling.com

@Leo95se the owners manual states that the chip size is continuously variable from 0 to 3.5mm.

For a cutterhead that size I doubt you'd see a significant difference on the finish, but for the minute extra cost I reckon the shear would be the one to get, and would probably be that little quieter still. The difference the one I bought made is astounding.

 

[Leo95se]

Speaking of Festool hose that can't keep up...

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2083550525725215/?fs=e&mibextid=wwXIfr&fs=e

That’s a big planer

 

[Leo95se]

the only time i had chips like that was when i planed plywood

my thoughts are to use the electric planer same as the hand planer. if you are getting chips like that with a hand planer you will soon adjust whatever is causing them, because it's not an easy thing and your knife clogs constantly
wrong grain direction would be my best guess

Yes, cross grain. But I needed a cross grain cut. I guess I’m also against the grain