Help with Planer

[Phil Koundakjian]

My portable planer I think is going to bite the dust .. Plus changing the knives is PTA. Anyway it is time to buy a new tool. I'm looking at the Steel City 13" with Helical Head or the Dewalt 735 units, or the Grizzly G0689. Any advice?

Mostly I am looking at the ease of changing knives or how easy is it to make necessary adjustments to the Helical Head.

Thanks .. Phil

[glenn bradley]

Free advice is worth just what you pay ;-)

The Steel City / Ridgid machine gets good reviews with the SCTW version having indexable HSS inserts. You won't get the life that the carbide insert heads on other tools give but the HSS inserts are 4 sided and should relieve your knife setup headaches. The Ridgid version uses indexed knives so setup there again, should be very easy. The DW735 is priced out of it's market IMHO but, knife changes are very easy although reportedly, all too frequent.