HL 850 planer review

[Leo95se]

Welp I gave it another go. Grabbed some maple from a tree in my yard and worked to flatten it a bit. With the grain and at ~20deg angles in each direction. I noticed it does well by lifting and working sections which is different from most videos I’ve seen, where it’s run along the length of a board.
This seemed to help working down high spots, and made me feel better.
I’d prefer to make use of the stock cutter and find some good uses for it before I invest in other heads.

Oh,the chips were normal looking this time. Heh. But wow, it filled up half my bin with just several passes!

Thanks everyone for talking me off the ledge. Here’s hoping I learn and get great use of this beast.

 

[luvmytoolz]

That's good, it's a seriously great planer. Once you get used to it you can even freehand curves on boards with it really easily and surprisingly quite accurately swinging it by just one hand.

 

[Cheese]

As a hand held planer it works wonders. As a table mounted planer for very small pieces of wood it still works wonders. As a table mounted planer for 2x material...not so much.
However, in retrospect that was on me. I was hoping that the HL 850 with the bench mount would replace my 6" Delta jointer to free up shop space. That was just foolishness on my part...can't believe I was that naive. The HL 850 stays in my stable of shop machines because of how well it works for those tasks it was designed for.

 

[derekcohen]

What I will add to my comments and photos depicting the removal of paint from ex-pergola beams is this:

1. there are plenty of tracks in the result as the beams are twice the width of the planer blade.

2. Lift up the planer at the end of the work piece to avoid snipe. This is simply the planer running out of registration.

3. Hooked up to a dust collector - here a Festool CT 26E and 27mm hose - there is no dust to clean up. Noise levels are also very good.

4. This is a "coarse" tool and not one for "fine" work.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[luvmytoolz]

As a hand held planer it works wonders. As a table mounted planer for very small pieces of wood it still works wonders. As a table mounted planer for 2x material...not so much.
However, in retrospect that was on me. I was hoping that the HL 850 with the bench mount would replace my 6" Delta jointer to free up shop space. That was just foolishness on my part...can't believe I was that naive. The HL 850 stays in my stable of shop machines because of how well it works for those tasks it was designed for.

If your HL850 had the CSP spiral head in it, you'd almost get away with it accomplishing some of the Delta tasks within reason. It's a brute with the spiral head. I was hogging full depth in blackbutt without any effort.