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excelent product
Wow, what a planer. When your not sure what to purchase it is a safe bet to go with DELTA......

Great tool
I've beens using this planer for a few years and have had no problems. The dust collection works great. The two speeds are handy. I've been running red oak through it and it comes through so smooth I really don't need to sand. I've found replacement blades at Lowes.

Great Planner - Knife Holder could be better
Love the planner. For some reason I have a problem with saw dust collecting under the knife which deflects the blade. I have to remove the blades and clean to get a good flat final pass. The knife holder itself is bent which speeds the process of dust collection. I can only guess as to the cause (probably my fault when I did not tighten it down enough before planning).
I have read many complaints about the knife life...
I planned some old deck boards (treated pine) and destroyed one side of the blade in no time (like 100bf). I have planned maple and cherry on the other side of the knifes and have planned well over 250bf and still going.

Better Than Expected
I have a whole shop full of Delta machines so I know pretty much what to expect from this company. Even so, I still did lots of research before buing this planer which had nearly all favorable reviews. The most common complaint was knives dulling too fast. More on that in a moment.

Out of the box and set up was quick with no problems; tables set up perfectly. Finish was excellent with zero snipe == for a while at least. There is a blue plastic film on the center machine bed. It looks like machine bluing so I didn't realize that it was a film. Nothing in the manual about removing it, either. After a while that film began to become scraped up and would roll into little globs of plastic -- all with predictable results -- getting snipe and not cutting parallel to bottom surface.. The problem got worse and worse until I raised the cutter head way up and examined what was happening.

Once the film was removed (just peel it off) everything back to normal. At least for a while. After about a month of daily use I began to notice a depression running down the length of the boards. It started out and inch wide and 0.010" deep and over a couple weeks increased to 0.050" deep and 2" wide. After removing the blades (which were not dull or damaged) the problem became clear. Wood chips were impacted between the blade holder bar and the blade, forcing the blade to bend. Removing the blade clamping bar, examination revealed the problem -- it was bent or unfair about 0.030" and the reason for this was also clear. The stamping of detent nib had caused the bend. I asked Delta for a new one and am now waiting for it after making a temporary fix.

But for these problems that could happen with any machine, I like this machine and would buy it again.

AS for all the complaints about short blade life, let me say that I used mine daily for a month on nothing but very,very hard tropical hardwoods with no significant blade dulling or chipping. The problem with short blade life is not the blades fault but the user's. GIGO, garbage in, garbage out: if you run dirty woood or use your machine to remove paint or recondition old wood, you must expect rapid dulling. Dirt is what does it. I use a stiff brush and scrub the dirt out of my rough lumber (which is always dirty) before planing. Take very shallow cuts rather than deep ones: I never go more than 1/32. If you are trying to reduce thickness by a 1/4" or more (as indicated in some reviews), you are using the wrong machine. You should be using a band saw for resawing. If you're careful about what you run through a planer, blade replacement should't be more that 2X year.

I particularly like the blade zero feature which I use constantly since I use differing thicknesses almost every time. You press the button down which locks it in place, then lower the cutterhead onto the stock untill it "clicks" off. At this point I raise the cutter a quarter turn to remove the stock, then lower it by a half turn to make the first cut. Works perfect every time with no fuss.

Oh yeah, you need the optional chip collecter which is sold separately. This machine throws a vertible blizzard of chips. It's a 4" nozzle, so buy a reducer couplling if your dust system is 2-1/2" I used a rubber drain reducer from Ace Hardware that has hose clamps on each end which works a lot better than plastic job that will eventually crack. $9 from Ace.

Also be very careful about the folding tables: bump one hard and it will bend at the hinge points and the only fix will be to replace the table. Fold up the tables when not in use.