Best Planers to Achieve Great Results in Woodworking in the UK

The Makita 2012NB is a powerful but pretty small thickness planer. Being equipped with a highly-efficient 15A motor, the tool can handle any type of wood, no matter how hard or soft it is. As a result, it makes the surface perfectly smooth and even. Thousands of users have already seen for themselves all its benefits and you've got a chance to try it as well; simple-to-use and safe as it is, it can be operated easily by any member of your family. Owing to the small size, this benchtop thickness planer is also easy to displace when necessary. After all, the weight is just 28.1 kg.

The smart design of the planer determines its comfortable use. Let's take a closer look at its features. What you'll see first are the scales, thanks to which it will be easy for you to set the depth of cut in an accurate way. Then you will notice the double-edged blades which are pressed tightly against the cutter head, delivering outstanding performance, and which can be reversed for continuous use. To replace the blades, all you need to do is unscrew two bolts and take off the chip cover. The pilot lamp on the tool will tell you whether it's plugged in or not.

For highly precise cutting and accuracy, the planer's fitted with a special Interna-Lok clamp that freezes workpieces in the head. This also makes it a great fit for using with all types of wood, including pretty expensive species. The other thing we've found attractive about this tool is that it's very quiet during operation; its noise level is only 86 dB.

So, if you need a reliable assistant for wood processing, the Makita 2012NB can be a real bargain. Quite light and easy to feed, it will prove itself to be a nice model to have at your workshop if the daily workload is rather high.

Every amateur carpenter or woodworker strives to bring his (or her) work to perfection. So, good workpieces are essential, and we recommend considering the Triton TPT125 to get them. This thickness planer will let you quickly smoothen and straighten rough timber for any hand-made article.

We bet most woodworkers have faced a kickback of a workpiece while using a planer once or twice at least. Which is really dangerous as a splinter may easily get into the eye and harm hit, or hurt your hand. However, this won't happen with this Triton planer. It features special anti-kickback pawls designed to hold a workpiece securely in place, reducing the risk of injures to the minimum. This feature makes this planner especially handy for amateur carpenters who have little or none experience in working with this type of tool.

Besides the overall simplicity of use, the Triton TPT125 stands out for its light weight and compact dimensions, making it perfectly suitable for garages and small workshops. If these are the things you need in your planer too, don't look further, the Triton TPT125 will fit you to a tee. And, if used together with a belt sander, your workpieces will come out not only good but also ideally smooth, as like those made by skilled carpenters.

When it comes to planing a large number of wood boards, we bet you want to handle this task fast, efficiently, and with maximum convenience. That's where the Lumberjack PT330B comes in handy.

First things first, the appliance boasts the maximum thickness and height capacities of 330 mm and 152 mm correspondingly. This means it's capable of handling quite bulky timber and large wood boards. Also, it's featured with two blades that have a 2.8-mm depth-of-cut. Thanks to this, not only will you be able to feed it thicker boards but also it will take you a minimum amount of time to complete the task. Don’t overlook the polished table and 4-post design of the planer, as these are the very features that ensure the smooth feeding and processing of timber.

One more advantage of this planer is that it has a no-volt release switch which keeps it from turning on in case a sudden power outage occurs, thus ensuring the operator's safety of use. Besides great performance specs, you will like the planer's usability features. It comes with folding tables for compact storage of the tool when not in use and has a dust extraction port, allowing you to keep the working surface and surroundings much cleaner than they otherwise would be.

In the end, the PT330B from Lumberjack will be a good option in case you are looking for a sturdy and durable thicknesser that is simple in operation and gets the job done.

Woodworking often involves situations when a thicknesser cannot be applied. For example, it may be a bevel planing or smoothing crooked planks. Nevertheless, these tasks aren't challenging for a planer like the Silverline 344944. Why did we pick this model for our planer review? Well, it is simply one of the best in its class!

First of all, we like a tiltable fence that allows bevelling it at an angle from 45° to 90°. This feature allows for making perfect corner joints, so your handicraft will be flawless. In addition, you'll be able to make a rough cut for a workpiece before thicknessing it, as the thicknesser's blades may run idle in deep concaves of a workpiece and the planing will be of fairly poor quality.

When it comes to actual wood processing this little fellow can manage some small and medium-sized boards without breaking a sweat. The maximum planing depth of 3 mm combined with 150 mm planing width makes this model good for long pieces of wood that need some additional finish to them. While the work surface is decent enough for general planing the 1800 W motor is capable of delivering up to 12,000 RPM, which will speed up the cutting quite a bit.

Thus, as you can see, a planer is not a competitor to a thicknesser but more of an important addition to it. If you need to process a wide piece of wood like a tabletop, using a hand planer will be the best and most efficient solution.

Anyone choosing a benchtop planer pursues performance and accuracy. DeWALT tools are remarkable for their high power and performance, and the DW733 thickness planer can also demonstrate ultimate cutting accuracy. This is usually achieved by the implementation of a few high-end solutions and this model is not an exception.

The first one that catches the eye by looking at the planer is the lock that fixes the cutter head in place to provide a uniform thickness for one or several workpieces. Thanks to this, you'll be able to get perfectly sized boards in one single go, without processing them with a hand planer or polisher.

The second solution (and we like it) is the special indicator that shows the thickness of the wood layer to be removed. So, you can set the relevant planing depth for various types of wood without worrying about damaging the blade.

Apart from high performance and top precision, what we like about this thicknesser is that it allows edging wood boards, and there's no need to buy and use a jointer additionally. The noisy motor is the only thing that we did not like about the DeWALT DW733, yet wearing hearing protectors can successfully solve this problem.

Despite the initial robustness of the engine, the DW733 has proven to be an excellent planer that can be utilised for various woodworking jobs. Fairly simple in operation, this particular model will be a good option for both amateur and experienced carpenters.