: The 735 is at least twice as good as either of the other two. It is
: an amazing stretch of patience for even a saint to run a
: thickness planer without a dust collector. The mess is
: tremendous. The 735 has a chip ejection fan that functions as a
: poor-man's dust collector. You have to buy the kit to get the
: hose and a filter bag, but you HAVE TO buy the kit or use a dust
: collector, or you can't use the planer. With the kit, you put a
: filter bag over the top of a garbage can, and the chip ejector
: blows all of your chips into the garbage can. Without the kit it
: will shoot a dangerous high-speed stream of dust and chips out
: the back of the machine. The other advantage of the chip fan is
: that you won't have chips getting caught on your drive rollers
: and denting your wood.

: Second- it has a 3-knife cutter head. Short of a spiral cutter,
: that's about as good as it gets. More cuts equals smoother
: finished product. With sharp blades it will produce a surface
: that is almost indistinguishable from hand planing.

: Like most professional planers, it has two speeds, one for
: dimensioning, and one for finishing.

: I don't know if it planes down to 1/16" on its own, I think it
: only goes down to 1/8. If you have super straight-grained stock
: and feed it in the correct direction, you can run it on a sled
: and get down to 1/16" with sharp blades.

: Also- very accurate height adjustment, with a chain drive. Comes
: with a magnetic setup jig that makes it simple to change the
: knives. Has a stock removal gauge, which I thought was cheezy,
: but I actually like it not what I'm used to it. Has depth stops,
: which are handy if you do something like forget to plane a
: board, or screw up some stock and need to get another piece- as
: long as you set up the depth stop when you do your original
: planing.

: Don't like- it's super heavy. You need a cart.

: I would also recommend getting the infeed/outfeed extension table
: set, especially if you're going to planing long 1/4" or
: smaller strips, or you'll get dreadful snipe.

: It's the first "consumer" planer I've used, and it is
: almost as powerful as a low-end professional. You can take off
: 1/16" from a 12" wide board without bogging it down,
: but you probably can't take off more than that in one pass.

: I've owned one for almost 5 years.

: m

Hi Mike,

Yep, very true, using a thickness planner without a dust collector makes a gigantic mess :)

Bill H.