Customer Reviews

JET 708529 JWP-15CS 15-Inch 3-Horsepower Planer, 230-Volt 1-Phase

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a furniture builder, a clean board is essential. I rely on this machine more than I imagined I would. It is a stable in my shop, and gets many hours of rough use. I have never had a problem with it. Here are the issues: You will need to wire in a 220V circuit. I put in a 30A breaker and a 12 guage wire, to USA wiring code. If you buy one, plan on having it delivered with a pallet jack, because it comes in a large 500+ lb box. Don't plan on turning it on immediately, you'll have to calibrate it. Buy a micrometer, you'll need it to adjust the intake feed roller, blades and eject roller. The instruction book shows how to make a calibration block, but it is just not accurate enough to eliminate feed roller marks in softwood. Get yourself a good steel straight edge to adjust the table feed rollers, they'll put a dent in your cut if not adjusted correctly. It took me about an hour to setup, but it is worth it. Calibration is easy, just takes a while. It makes consistent cuts, but the height guage is worthless. You better plan on measuring height some other way, I use calipers. Estimate how far to turn the table height? Try VooDoo or a fortune-teller. The blades dull quickly (not Jet's fault) and when they do, you'll chip instead of cut. It is a good planer, very stable, three belts keep the blades cutting through even the toughest hardwoods. You MUST have a dust collector (I have the Jet DC-1100 - works great, plenty of debris storage), without one, the machine will clog. BTW: The Powermatic is the same saw, just a finer buffed steel table...save your money and get the Jet.

All of the previous reviews here are accurate. I love mine and really appreciate having the extra set of blades. Manual is confusing in advising the use of 50 wt. gear oil after 25 hours of use. What they mean is transmission oil used in 4 wheelers or 4 wheel Drives. Blades are easy to set. Thickness gauge is useless. Get calipers, dust collector, and hearing protection.
Have two or three friends to help unload the 500 lb. crate. Once on the ground and in place they can go home so you can be alone with your new friend. JET help line is very helpful and will bend over backwards to advise and make it right. Take the time to set it up correctly so you learn what all the adjustments can do.

I've had this tool for about 5 years. It has been flawless. The construction is rock-solid. The tool came shipped on a pallet enclosed in a wood crate. It was perfect right from the box and required only minor assembly.

It has plenty of power even when planing 15" wide hardwood boards. Unlike the portable planers I've used, this one planes boards smooth without snipe. The built-in wheels inside the enclosed base make it easy to move around and the brake makes it stay put when you want it to.

Buy this tool with confidence. I am very fussy and I love this tool.

I reviewed both the Delta and the Jet. The main reason for deciding on Jet was how easy it was to access the blades. The blades are easily gotten to with "no motor in the way". Blades can easily be remove and replaced within 15 minutes, including setup.

This is my third JET tool. The others are a belt/disc sander and a 10" cabinet saw with extension table. I have been very impressed with the quality and performance of Jet machinery but still spent several months doing some serious shopping before finally deciding on this planer. After reading all the "Horror Stories" in the reviews of planers by other companies primarily dealing with assembly and adjustment I was very pleasantly surprised with this unit. Assembly and adjustment is a piece of cake if you just take your time. My advice, read the manual a couple of times then take your time examining the unit. You will be surprised how easily it goes together. Someone at the factory really took thier time assembling the unit, just about everything was perfect.
Performance? It is great! I have used this unit with and without the table locks and have not noticed a difference. Great finish with no snipe. You will definitly need a dust collector, this unit produces chips, big time. Some of these chips can cause marking of the wood if they fall ahead of the outfeed roller between the stock and the table. The only thing I'm really not comfortable with is the thickness scale. It is a little difficult to read and I'm not convinced it is really that accurate. All in all it is a great machine, I'm very satisfied and I'm sure that I will be in the future.

Being an owner of several other pieces of Jet equipment, I was very eager to make the jump from my Dewalt DW733 bench planer to this workhorse, and to date I have not been disappointed. I have owned this machine for about 6 months and have run both soft and hardwoods through it and it has performed well. I have to admit, the setup and tweaking of this machine took some time but I was able to virtually eliminate all of the snipe. The secret seemed to be to adjust both ends of the infeed and outfeed metal rollers to angle slightly upward so the material will feed tightly against the inside infeed and outfeed rollers. Upon adjusting and readjusting with several test cuts, I was able to eliminate the snipe. Also, many reviewers complain about the scale not being accurate. I found mine to work rather well again after some slight adjustments. Now I unlock the head, bend over to look at the scale straight-on, crank the head to the desired height, i.e., set to 5/8 of an inch if I want to remove 1/8 off a 3/4 inch thick board. Simply fire up the unit and feed your material through and you will be surprised at how accurate the cut will be. Here are a couple of additional points to consider. Make sure to adjust the height on both feed rollers as described in the manual. Using the wooden block that is described is a bit hokey but it does work. This will also lead to more accurate, clean cuts. Also, be sure to test the tightness of the belts upon the initial start-up. I had to adjust mine a couple of times to get the tension just right. (When they were loose the machine would start up with a "bang" until I got the tension corrected). Also, be sure to wire this up to a 30 amp breaker. You will notice some "handwritten" reference to this if you download the manual online. I called Jet tech support on this and the reason for the heavy duty breaker is due to the amperage that is drawn by the unit upon its initial startup.
All in all I am very pleased with this unit, and I am sure it will remain a cornerstone piece of equipment in my shop for many years to come.

I purchased a Jet 15CS wood planer a month ago and am very happy with it so far. It will take an 1/8" of material off a board without laboring and is very quiet compared to my two other finish planers. A Ryobi AP10 (almost 10 years old) and a Delta 22-580 (over two years old). I picked the Jet because it has conventional straight planer blades over the Powermatic 15" which has a set of spiral blades. It allows me to tune up the blades myself without having to send them out to a sharpening shop. The finish quality of the cut is very good.

The depth gauge isn't the greatest since it doesn't relate one revolution on the crank to some denomiation of an inch like my Delta but I can get my material close to the thickness I want in a hurry! When I get close I just finish it off with a final pass on my Delta finish planer or make sure that my final pass on the Jet is about 1/16" deep. If the final pass is too light I have noticed that it will leave slight indentations from the infeed roller which can be sanded out. I don't have this problem with the other finish planers because they have rubber feed rollers.

When I got my planer it was easy to assemble and required no fine tuning adjustments. The two speed switch wasn't working and it would only feed at the higher rate though. The authorized Jet Service Dealer came out within a week and had it working within 2 hours at no charge.

The cord that came with the machine was too short to be of any practical use so I replaced it with a longer cord with a twist lock plug to suit my needs. I also removed the casters that came with the machine and built my own plywood base with four nice locking casters.

I think this planer will serve my needs well for many years to come.

By the way, I put down 5 stars but the review somehow came out with one star and I can't edit it.

Michael

this machine is a beast for it's size. however, that is where my compliments end. i bought the jet 15" planer to mill face frame stock for my moderate sized cabinet shop. it will plane wood all day long without question. the only question is how do you make it work properly. it leaves more marks, indentations, snipe, etc. than i have ever seen from a planer. i have followed all of the "how to" instructions from the manual and nothing makes this thing perform. my shop spends more time sanding the planer marks out of the wood than we do for any and all other reasons. i upgraded from a portable 12" dewalt 2 knife planer to this--and i have to say that the dewalt planer hand's down out performed this machine in regards to finish quality. I would also like to add that the blade setting jig is awful...another area that the dewalt planer is superior. i could see no reason to recommend this unit to someone else unless you just needed to hog out material. it will perform that task effortlessly....just with enumerable mill marks.

I have used my 15 inch plane for about 5 years now. I have made a few minor adjustments, had no failures, hit one nail and replace the blades 3 times. It is noisy but planes wood very well.

I have owned this planer for a year. It does fine on softwood but gives me a constant fit in feeding any kind of hardwood over 6 inches wide. The feeding is TERRIBLE! The outfeed tables are poorly designed and do NOT stay in place, especially since you have to push & pull on them to move it. The vibration is a constant problem with loosening of bolts and setscrews, and the noise can literally be heard 1/2 a mile away. The maintenance is anything but simple. I wish I had bought a Delta!