Advice please: buying my first planer/thicknesser

Hi everyone

I'm currently looking for my first thicknesser/planer and need some advice. Even though I'm in South Africa it looks like the various options are similar to Australia's. Roughly for the same money (±R 7,500 to ±R 9,500) I can get any of the following:

1. Well used Elektra Beckum HC 260 planer/thicknesser
2. Brand new Ryobi JP-254L planer/thicknesser combo
3. Brand new Metabo DH 330 bench top thicknesser

It will be for occasional garage projects, nothing commercial but still it should be reliable and accurate. A forth option might be a Ryobi AP-13 thicknesser which will also be the cheapest of all my options (±R6500 new). If I only get a thicknesser I'll most probably have to build a sled for it in order to do planing with it as well. The combo machines are therefor quite handy I guess but to my limited knowledge it looks like they can't handle very wide stock?
Looking forward to any comments and/or advice.

Regards

I would stick with a benchtop thicknesser given you'r options. Those two small combination machines are a bit on the lightweight side. The Metabo will likely outlast the Ryobi so thats why the price difference but both would do a similar job on your wood.
A sled can be made to get the first face flat or if you are any good with a hand plane or an electric hand held plane then they are also options. The first face does not need to be perfect just flat enough so there is no rocking on a flat surface.
Regards
John

Thanks John, that makes sense, I haven't really thought about roughly planing the one side with an electric hand planer, but I've got one so that only requires a very simple sled then I assume. I have an option on a second hand Ryobi thicknesser in a nearby town that I'll go and have a look at on the weekend. Hopefully that's all I need to start out with and can upgrade at a later stage if needed. Thanks again.

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Originally Posted by Stokperdjie

Thanks John, that makes sense, I haven't really thought about roughly planing the one side with an electric hand planer, but I've got one so that only requires a very simple sled then I assume. I have an option on a second hand Ryobi thicknesser in a nearby town that I'll go and have a look at on the weekend. Hopefully that's all I need to start out with and can upgrade at a later stage if needed. Thanks again.

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I used a piece of melamine covered chipboard (cut from an old benchtop, 32mm thick) as a sled. Put scraps of wood under the board as needed to stop it rocking and stuck it down firmly with hot melt glue. It started as a stop gap, it was crude and a bit heavy, but it worked and I never got round to making anything better.

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Originally Posted by Glennet

I used a piece of melamine covered chipboard (cut from an old benchtop, 32mm thick) as a sled. Put scraps of wood under the board as needed to stop it rocking and stuck it down firmly with hot melt glue. It started as a stop gap, it was crude and a bit heavy, but it worked and I never got round to making anything better.

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Thanks Glen, I'll surely do something similar. Still got a few panels of 18mm plywood that I perhaps should cut to size and glue two together to make a 36mm thick sled. What would a good length be for the sled? Or maybe make a short one of say, 1500mm and a longer one of about 2500mm? A common workable lenght here in S.Africa is 2.4m long boards.

I guess the melamine is the key to a smooth slide through the thicknesser? Perhaps I should not use the plywood then, at least not for the bottom (underside).

I use a sled made with 6mm MDF top and bottom with a 16mm thick x 25mm MDF frame work in the middle to make a torsion box. I use wax on the bottom and I find go through the thicknesser very easily.

On the subject of the Ryobi 254, I own an equivalent machine ( they are sold under about 20 different names). There are several reviews of the various incarnations on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7UKx8ccpC0

It does the lightweight jobs for me but it has several big flaws like
a) noise
b) unbelievably bad snipe, which you cope with by lifting the loose end of the board at the in feed end
c) a very poor planer infeed table leveling mechanism, which you cope with by banging it left or right with an open palm using a straight edge off the outfeed table to eyeball the "tilt"
d) a weak, near useless fence, which you can simply screw a manufactured board to.
e) the blades are rare, vary between brand incarnations, are expensive, and require expensive sharpening.

I would suggest you find a local woodworking group and join their club to use their dedicated machines, which are generally several thousand dollars worth each, high quality well maintained with good dust control, and you can generally get help with then from other members.
In the longer term it works out vastly cheaper, you get a better quality finish and are not up for the time or cost of maintenance, and you dont have it taking up room in your workshop

All the Best

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stokperdjie

Thanks Glen, I'll surely do something similar. Still got a few panels of 18mm plywood that I perhaps should cut to size and glue two together to make a 36mm thick sled. What would a good length be for the sled? Or maybe make a short one of say, 1500mm and a longer one of about 2500mm? A common workable lenght here in S.Africa is 2.4m long boards.

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I had two of about those lengths, the shorter one was probably a bit shorter, one was for full length planks but for things like table legs I’d cut the plank roughly to length first. I found the benchtop material under the shed when I bought the house and it was ideal, but very heavy. I was making furniture, mainly by hand, as a hobby so a couple of hours hard work at the start of a project wasn’t a big deal and I never got round to making anything better.

The melamine surface, which was on both sides, helped a lot because it slid through the thicknesser easily and also I could pop the plank off and scrape off the hot melt glue easily.

Thanks T91 and Glennet - much appreciated. Unfortunately I live in a small town here in S.Africa and don't have access to a woodworking group, I do however have a colleague at work who's been making furniture, etc as a side line for all his life so we often have a chat around our morning coffee at the office!

In other news: yesterday I bought the secondhand Ryobi 318mm thicknesser that I've mentioned earlier. It also included an adjustable stand and in general it's in a fair condition for what I've paid (R3000 which is ±300 Australian Dollar I think). I'm already in the process of stripping it down and cleaning everything out as far as my non-existing knowledge allows, but I'm a quick learner I hope! Luckily the blades are reversable and only one side has been used, so I'm good for now.

Please excuse my ignorance since this is my first thicknesser, but the only thing that concerns me a bit is that there are in total four metal "cubes" with holes that hold the ends of the infeed and outfeed rollers. These are pushed down by springs and obviously act as bushes for the rollers. I notice about 0.5mm play on the inside of these holes where the roller ends have started wearing them down on the side where the spring pushed down on it. There's little sign of grease here so I'm not surprised and I guess these are wear parts?

My immediate thought is to simply turn them around and add generous amounts of grease. In future I'll try to find replacement parts online or try and have them made by an engineering shop. I'll add a few pictures later of this "restoration" project of mine.

Cheers
Jan

Few pics as promised: