Thread: GMC 180mm Power Planer

I have just emailed them. Thanks Damian.

I will post if they are able to help. Cheers.

I've been a fan of large hand planers for a while. When I saw the GMC planer come up on ebay in the last year at around $200 I was quite interested. I twigged that it has non-sharpenable tungsten blades so I contacted the ebay seller to find out availability of blades.

He was courteous, but explained they were only selling them for a supplier. He contacted the supplier and advised as a result that there were no blades available through that avenue.

As a result I did not go ahead and purchase as efforts through the net to locate a source failed.

I am still looking for some replacement parts for my ancient Ryobi L520, which I bought about 30years ago (it is 150mm wide) and I currently have a Makita monster, (170mm wide.)

As I said, I am a fan of large hand planers.

Regards
Paul

Paul,

How do you find your Makita 170mm planer, I have only a small workshop and need a means to flatten wide slabs efficiently. I have a job coming up that would require cleaning up 600mm wide slabs and this looks like a nice tool that would save me a bit of running around

Regards,
Kane

Originally Posted by enak

Paul,

How do you find your Makita 170mm planer, I have only a small workshop and need a means to flatten wide slabs efficiently. I have a job coming up that would require cleaning up 600mm wide slabs and this looks like a nice tool that would save me a bit of running around

Regards,
Kane

Kane

I have not used this machine to flatten slabs only wide boards. I have no doubt that it will plough through whatever timber you have and cut a swarth 170mm wide. I was planing ironbark. It is quite heavy, but this works in it's favour as long as it is used in a horizontal position.

You must appreciate that it will leave some marks, which you will have to clean up either with hand planes or a belt sander before final finishing. If you wished you could probably carefully modify the blades for your job by easing the corners to avoid sharp lines

You would also need to keep the blades sharp possibly with spare sets handy.

It is a bit on the pricey side. RRP $1200+, but probably in reality <$1000. You will also have to hunt around for a stockist. very few stock them.

It is an awesome machine.

Also consider for your job setting up steel bed with rails and a cross carriage along which you can run a router . Use a large diameter straight cutter (>32mm) for the flattening process. I made up one for the bed of my sawmill, but have never actually got around the using it.

Regards
Paul

Thanks Paul,

Easing the corners sounds easier than setting up the rails for a router i think. I'm tending towards the planer purely for the fact that I get a new piece of machinery! I have no problem cleaning power planer marks with a hand plane, also a router would also leave machined marks anyway.

Just did a search and Norwest Tools have it for $967, still a bit expensive but better than doing it all by hand I guess.

Regards,
Kane

Is it going to be a lot quicker than the normal makita power planer ? The reason I ask is that apart from the much higher buying price the blades will be dearer.

The only makita tool I own is a planer and I bought a set of 10 blades on ebay for about $20 similar to:

Planer Blades Tungsten 10pk Universal BUY 2 GET 1 FREE! | eBay

I decked the timber section of my trailer floor and was able to rip it down very quickly before reducing the cut depth and finishing the work.

I just would have thought you'd need to do a lot of slabs to make the extra expense worthwhile ?

Just a thought.

Originally Posted by damian

Is it going to be a lot quicker than the normal makita power planer ? The reason I ask is that apart from the much higher buying price the blades will be dearer.

The only makita tool I own is a planer and I bought a set of 10 blades on ebay for about $20 similar to:

Damian and Kane

It is a point to consider. These days I have a sharpener (it will cope with a 600mm blade) and consequently is not an issue for me. In fact I only have one set of blades for the makita.

When I was using the Ryobi, before the darstardly dog ran off with the parts, I had two sets of blades and I used to resarpen them on a large diamond plate. This was satifactory as long as I did not let the blades go too dull before resharpening. I was planing 150mm and 200mm exposed, ironbark rafters when we built our house.

The point of the wide planer is to reduce the marks left by the machine. Like I said the planer is not cheap, but it does do it easily.

Regards
Paul

I just brought a Maktec 82mm planer no Idea how to use it but what it leaves the sander gets

I copied this link from another thread http://torqueworkcentres.com/, looks like a fairly useful bit of kit,

The torque is great and if I were starting from scratch again I might consider one, but:

They are not cheap.

Like most multi-purpose tools they do few jobs as well as the dedicated machine. It is a more versatile saw than a table saw, but it's not as good a table saw as a table saw if you see what I mean.

As always it depends on what your making, how much space you have and how you prefer to work. You could for example pick up a good second hand professional grade 3 phase combination machine and a generator (or inverter) to drive it for similar money to setting up a bigger torque. You'd get a 12" jointer, thicknesser, 10" saw and a shaper. Won't do everything the torque can do but it can do a lot well.

You could almost argue we have too many good options