Planer Thicknesser

where to start. i have been after one of these for a while now but the price tag put me off. i did not want to go for another brand that it available elsewhere. so i waited. when it came down to £200 in the black friday deal i snapped it up. boy am i glad i did. 10 mins setting up. 10 mins working out the adjustments. 10 mins swapping out the extractor/safety unit. first the planer. ran some pallet wood along it. kept running it to take of .5mm to 1mm. after a couple of passes, you could se it starting to smooth out. once i finished the wood needed no sanding. it was super smooth. i then flipped over to the Thicknesser. once i got the adjustment right again through multiple small passes the finish is superb. no need to sand. the fence is about 1deg out. but it isnt a great problem for me & i will play with it to get it square. as others have said the extraction/safety device is a bit fiddly. but it only takes a couple of mins to do, it he fence is slid fully towards the planer adjusting knob. all in all i am delighted with this purchase. it is solid, well built, fantastic price i got it for. the bed is totally level. no gaps anywhere on it. using a set square & spirit level. it was delivered on time exactly when Rutlands said it would be. it even comes with a push block, and a spare drive belt. rutlands have really excelled themselves with this piece of equipment. if you are in the market for a planer/thicknesser. buy it

Compact, well built and a great performer. Don’t confuse this with similar looking but cheaper tools, even if some casings are shared, having had both, this is miles ahead. The fence isn’t quite as robust as I’d like, however with a little bit of time spent setting up it runs straight and true. So far I have used this on oak, larch, C16 Pine and Tulipwood for a guitar body. I am very happy with the results, great finish and if you are careful feeding your work piece into the rollers, snipe is minimal to nonexistent! I got this with the Black Friday offer at an absolute steal, but would’ve been happy to pay full price. Excellent customer service as always. Thank you again Rutlands!

Overall a decent machine for the price. Planing does a good job when you limit it to 0.5mm, anything more causes a fair amount of tear out. Thicknessing is ok but the pressure rollers have a tendency to grab the timber quite aggressively, causing the cutters to slightly gouge the start and end of the piece of timber, which have to be sanded or re-planed to remove the gouge, so not perfect.

Having used a large Sedgwick planer many years ago I was a lisle sceptical about a machine of this size. So far it has performed very well. I bought a number of lengths of rough cut 4 x 2's in 6 foot lengths and trued them on the surface table. Then I thicknessed all four faces removing roughly 2mm per face. The first time I used it I did not connect my extractor and the finish was not ultra smooth. When I did connect the extractor the finish was excellent. Dust gets trapped in the recess between the planer knives and the cutter block when not using an extractor. Overall very pleased with this planer and I would definitely invest again.

It was delivered on time about a week ago. Installation was trivial. Initial results are very promising. It cuts cleanly and accurately. Chip extraction works very well, although it is somewhat tedious when changing over from planing to thicknessing. However at the price this is more than acceptable. I would strongly recommend this product.