Hand Planer - Powered - Usefulness for Harry Homeowner

In your title, you mentioned a hand planer. I assume that refers to a handheld power planer. Don’t. Get. One.

They do have their place, and IMO, that is for rough framing. They are useful for getting various framing members (studs, joists, rafters, etc…) planing together.

They will ruin some beautiful hardwood stock, lickity split.

Go with hand planes (not powered) or a thickness planer. If you don’t need it right now, you probably don’t need it.

-- Support woodworking hand models. Buy me a sawstop.

Useful in

Adding the bevel to the lock side of wooden doors
Score a line along the bottom of a wooden door, then plane to the line

Some studs will stick out in a wall framing job, this will remove the bow a bit, towards making the wall flatter.

Not useful on anything wider than the cutters.

BTDT

-- A Planer? I'M the planer, this is what I use

They are mostly used for carpentry things like fitting doors.

For general furniture and cabinet making they are not much
use… too tricky to control. Some of us use them for
flattening large slabs but that’s an exotic application.

In your title, you mentioned a hand planer. I assume that refers to a handheld power planer.

I meant Power Planer, my fault.

I’m glad I asked you guys first before buying one. Watching vidoes of guys using one – i looked unstable to me. I wondered how you could keep a consistent cut.

Glad I asked – not good for my uses….

Thanks a lot

I can’t do much in my shop without my DeWalt 734. Absolutely the most used power tool in my shop.

-- Love thy neighbour as thyself

I use my Ridgid R888 occasionally for really rough work, but most of the time it just sits. And “occasionally” usually entails a carpentry project involving my house. I will say that having a cordless model is pretty cool. I have no idea why they discontinued it, it has a helical cutterhead!

-- Woodworking from an engineer's perspective

The hand held power planer in my shop seldom gets used as it is too hard to flatten a board wider than the cutters. I have a DeWalt 734 bench top planer and it is probably my most often used tool after my table saw. If you spend $100 for a really good hand held you are half way to the price of the planer. Mine was $199 on sale at Home Depot. I use mine so much it is down now waiting for a new drive belt to come in. The belts are fine but I put so much stock through the machine, they wear out.

If you have a planer, you can buy rough lumber nd dress it yourself. The money you will save in the rough stock will pay for the planer in no time. It’s the better way to go, IMHO.

-- I am going to go stand outside so if anyone asks about me, tell them I'M OUTSTANDING!

I used my Makita 1900B for the initial stages of flattening really rough stock that’s too wide for my thickness planer.