: Hi All, I'm getting ready for my next build and shopping for a
: thickness planer which I narrowed down to 3 planers, a Dewalt
: 734, Dewalt 735 and
: a Rigid R4330. My question is what does the the Dewalt 735 do that
: makes it twice as much as the 734, also I'm not sure if any of
: them will mill
: strips down to 1/16". Any help is sorely appreciated. Thanks
: Nick R.

I saw the 735 at a show, and since it had a thickness stop at 1/8", I bought it. When trying to plane 1/8" spruce stock for guideboat rib laminations, it would literally chew off the ends of the strips well beyond any snipe. I talked to the factory; they sent me another one. Same thing - it would not plane to 1/8" without eating the ends of the work piece. I kept it around for a while for use on thicker stock, and it was a super machine - very little snipe, extremely smooth output. It would blow the chips right into the dust collector bag without even having to run the dust collector motor.

Then one day I loaded it into the trunk and brought it to the local DeWalt-Porter Cable repair shop. The tech told me not to even lug it in - the problem is the super powerful chip blower. With thin stock, the feed end of the strip gets sucked up off the table right into the knives before it gets to the outfeed roller and chews up the end. Once both rollers are engaged, it planes just fine. When the end of the work piece passes the infeed roller, the now-free end is again sucked up into the knives, blasting the end. He said there is no fix or modification that he knew of. I eventually sold it to a woodworker that doesn't build boats and has no need to plane thin pieces. I went back to my trusty 733, which planes 1/8" stock just fine. The 734 is a newer version of the 733.

- John