QA

Quick Answer: How To Use An Electric Hand Planer

Are electric hand planers any good?

Electric hand planers are great little tools in the right conditions and can save time and effort when used correctly. Make sure that you never lay any plane flat on it’s blade, even if the blade is fully retracted, best to lay planes on their side or mount them so the base is angles away.

When would you use an electric hand planer?

A power planer’s primary function is to smooth the surface of wood, but it can also be used to smooth wood’s rough end grain. It’s also used for tapering wood. If a door is too wide, for instance, make passes with a power planer over the side of the door, adjusting the depth gauge to give a cut of the desired depth.

Can you joint with an electric planer?

The electric hand planer usually comes with an edge guide for jointing. Truthfully, jointing is what these machines do best. Once you learn to set up your planer properly, you can easily get a glue-ready edge on any sized board. This method has its advantages over using a bench top jointer.

What is a hand planer good for?

A hand planer can pare off just a thin slice of wood, no tool is better for shaving the edge of a sticking door, chamfering the corner of a board, or straightening one that is twisted or warped. That’s why most carpenters still pack a hand plane or two in their toolboxes.

Will a planer remove paint?

Can a planer be used to remove paint? A planer can be used to remove paint. Although running it gently along the surface may not do the trick, you can achieve this effect with a deeper blade setting. You need to set your blades, so they dig deep enough to get under the layer or layers of paint you wish to remove.

Can you use a hand planer on a cutting board?

4 Answers. I had this idea that I would be able to run the hand plane over the surface of the (already smooth) cutting board and peel off whisper-thin shavings. Yes that is exactly what you should be able to do so don’t despair you haven’t bought into something that isn’t going to deliver what you want.

Can you use an electric planer on MDF?

Yes, MDF can be planed. And although I have never had MDF causing damage to a planer blade such as chipping, your planer blades may get dull faster due to the glue content of the MDF.

How do you use a power hand planer on a wide board?

How Do You Use a Power Hand Planer on Wide Boards Step 1 – Flatten Big Slabs of Wood. Step 2 – Shave off the high spots. Step 3 – Fine-tune the Flatness of the Wood. Step 4 – Flatten the Board Again. Step 5 – Use a Manual Hand Plane. Step 6 – Rip a Wide Board. Step 7 – Use Glue to join the board pieces.

What is an electric hand planer?

​An electric (hand) planer is a tool used to take off small amounts wood by shaving it off in increments. They usually have two or three blades to achieve this and the ​maximum amount of material that can be removed in a single pass is usually around 1/8″ (3/32″ typically).

Do I need a hand planer?

If you’re a woodworker who needs to straighten or smooth wood, a hand plane is a must for your tool set. Whether shaving down a wood door that’s sticking or smoothing the surface of a wavy board, no tool works quite as well as a hand plane.

When would you use a planer?

Woodworking jointers and planers are used to mill wood so they can be used to build furniture and other projects to correct dimensions. If your workshop doesn’t have a jointer to square up an edge or your wood piece is too large to fit through, you can use your planer to flatten both pieces of wood.

What hand plane should I buy first?

Your first purchases should be a low-angle block plane and a shoulder plane, above. Both help you put a refining touch on the less-than-perfect cuts produced by your power tools. For example, with a few strokes, a finely tuned low-angle block plane shaves burn marks or fuzz off end grain that saw blades leave behind.

Is paint bad for planer blades?

Yes, the paint dulled the blades; no, it didn’t ruin them. I just had to sharpen them when I was done. The call to make is whether using the wood is worth the cost of blade sharpening. Painted wood dulls planer blades rapidly because paint contains abrasive minerals.

Can you run finished wood through a planer?

A: You could plane off an old finish, but it’s not worth the risk. Planer cutterheads can generate sufficient friction to soften such finishes as polyurethane, gumming up their knives. After sanding away the finish, feed the wood through a planer to erase the sanding marks.

Is it OK to plane painted wood?

It is okay to plane most types of painted wood but the blades may dull faster. For safety and environmental reasons, planing painted wood with lead based or cementitious (waterproofing) paint is NOT RECOMMENDED.

What angle should a hand plane be sharpened?

The primary bevel for chisels and plane blades is normally 25 degrees (a time-tested angle). If you look at the blade diagram above its perfectly acceptable, from a sharpness perspective, to hone the primary bevel flat and hone the back of the blade flat and where these two meet you can achieve a sharp cutting edge.