: Does anyone have any experience with a Delta TP300 Shopmaster 12"
: Portable Planer? It's about the cheapest planer I've found. Delta seems
: like a good brand to me, but I've seen the planer going for $195. Is it
: any good? I would be buying it to reduce strips to a uniform 1/4"
: thickness. Would this machine be able to handle it? Any thoughts? (I've
: never owned a planer.)

If you have never owned a planer the I am wondering why you think you need one now. It is not essential for making strips. Do you have any other uses for such a tool? Or are you planning to make strips for a living?

If you are planning on making just a few boats, and want such a tool JUST for planing the strips needed for these boats, then save your money. There are other ways to get your strips to size which may take a few minutes more time, but are way less expensive.

Start with how you make your strips. Ripping your strips with a "planer" ground saw blade gives the strips a very smooth finish and frequently removes the need to use a planer.

sometimes the large boards exert a great deal of leverage against the saw blade and this makes the strips uneven. Cutting the strips a bit oversize, and then readjusting the thickness and recutting the (now very light) strips with a second pass can work wonders. when you make that second pass, all the strips you are working with are going to be very close to the same size, You'll be cutting away wood from the side that is not in contact with the fence, and any fingerboards you put on will not need to be constantly adjusted. In effect you lose a bit more wood to the "kerf", but you save on the price of an expensive tool which you might not use very often. For that $200 ( plus shipping, plus upkeep -- those blades need to be sharpened and replaced) you could buy enough wood for another boat or two -- or all the epoxy and glass you would need.

Probably the simplest and most cost-efficient is a sanding disk mounted on your table saw. This is nothing more than a disk of aluminum or steel which is the diameter of a saw balde, but has no teeth on it. You use a contact cement to glue a sheet of sandpaper to the side of this. Set your saw so that your fence is not perfectly parallel to the blade. You want about a small taper, which you can easily achieve by putting a board along side the fence and using a wedge to keep the outfeed end of the board away from the fence. This auxilliary fence should not go more than an inch past the sanding disk. That way the strip can flex away from the disk after it is sanded. Clamp the assembly down tight. Have fingerboards holding the strip against the fence, and as you push the strip along the fence the sanding disk will remove the excess wood. The tapered feed arrangement lets the sanding disk start on the wider strip, aand then as it passes by the entire diameter of the disk more and more wood turns into sawdust. What comes out is a nice smooth and even strip.

Generally power planers have a minimum thickness that they will work on, and 1/4 inch is pretty close to that point, so if you want to shave your strips a fraction thinner, be certain the tool will do it -- or that you can raise the platen with a sheet of plywood or hardboard so the cutters can come close enough for what you want. by the time you do that much work, though, you could make a fixture to hold a power hand plane, and have it do the same job, but for less money. Harbor Freight has a 3 1/2 inch power planer for under $50. Set it on a couple of spacer strips which are the thickness you want, and maybe 2 inches apart. Hold it down with some bungee cords, and shove your irregular strips under the cutters. Coming out of the back is a nice smooth and even strip. If you hit a really thick spot in your strip the bungee cords will let the planer ride up over it. If need be, shove it through a second or third time to get it into shape.

just some ideas.

PGJ

Here is a hand held power planer which can be mounted 1/4 inch above a flat table to give you smooth 1/4 inch strips at a quarter of the price of the planer you are talking about.