Customer Reviews

DEWALT DW733 12-1/2-Inch Portable Thickness Planer

5 star:		(80)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've had mine for almost a month now. Have planed over 200 feet of air dried, 6" wide, rough sawn red oak. The first set of blades are dull enough to change. I am very happy with this tool so far. The dust hood is definitely a must, and I feel it should be included with the planer. The only minor problem that I have encountered, is that the infeed rollers get dirty quick and begin to slip. But with a little shove, the wood is on its way again. I am however disappointed that amazon deleted the few negative reviews that were here a couple weeks ago. They were not obnoxious, they were just being honest about their bad encounters with the tool. By deleteing these comments, it makes these reviews almost useless.

Amazon, being critical of a tool is a good thing. It makes the manufacturers aware that there may be problems, and it only makes for finer quality tools in the future.

I've owned my planer for a little over 2 years. My comments are as follows:

1. It produces an excellent surface.

2. It is prone to having material occasionaly stick on it's way through the planer. This is generally the result of pitch build-up, especially when planing pine. The problem can be solved by waxing the infeed and outfeed tables and cleaning the rubber infeed and outfeed rollers.

3. It is EXTREMELY loud. It produces a very high-pitched and irritating scream. This can be mostly solved with hearing protection, but with even the best, you'll know it's running!

4. The knives stay sharp for a long time, but are prone to chipping. This leaves a raised line in the board, but since the chips are usually small, the lines are easy to sand out. Fortunately, the knives are easy to change.

5. A dust collector is necessary for best operation. If you operate without dust collection, chips will fall back on the rollers and leave dents in your wood. My shop vac couldn't keep up. I finally bought a Jet DC 1100 and solved both problems.

6. The depth-of-cut gauge and turrent depth stops are very handy.

7. It is a heavy machine. Furthermore, the dust port prevents the outfeed table from folding. This is not a problem for me since I use it mounted on a stand. But, if I wanted a more portable unit, I might pass it by for the smaller Delta or Makita.

Conclusion: This is an excellent tool, but it's not perfect. I would give it 5 stars for cut and features, but have down-graded it slightly because of the problems with material occasionally sticking while passing through the planer and because of noise. If the choice was available, I would give it 4 1/2 stars.

I purchased my planer about 3 months ago and have used it on approximatly 300 board feet of oak and maple and I am still on the first set, first side of the blades. I compared planers for about 2 months, read Wood Mag. reviews and decided on the DeWalt. There is little of no snipe due to the extra long infeed and outfeed tables. It was easy to set up because you take it out of the box, unfold the tables, plug it in and your in business. I really enjoy the thickness indicator that tells you how much wood you are removing. I would recommend this machine to anyone who does a lot of planning.

I've been an owner of a DW733 for several years. The machine planes well but it does require lots of maintenance. I had to replace the nylon belts at least twice. Its not a hard job to replace them and they are not that expensive. I now stock an extra belt to minimize my down time. You can minimize this problem from happening by not taking too big of a bite in a single operation. On most woods I don't take off more than 1/32" on a single pass. If you try to take too much off in a single pass, the board may jam, which cause the motor to spin which fries the belt fairly quickly. I've also had a sprocket break which DeWalt service gave me a free replacement part for. The latest problem I'm experiencing is with its chains. The chains are what drive the feed rollers. They have stretched to the point where they slip a tooth during planing operations. I'll typically plane 10-12 feet long boards, mostly planning 3/4" board down 1o 1/2", and some 6/4 boards down to 1 1/8". Maintenance problems started happening after only planning about 200-400 linear feet. That's right, after planning 20-40 10 foot boards some maintenance/repair was needed. If you're occassionally doing thickness planning, then this machine may be what you're looking for. If you're doing thickness planing on a more frequent basis, then this is not the machine for you. My guess is that all the portable thickness planers on the market are for light duty and for occassional use, but the manufacturers don't tell you that! I don't think I've been particularly hard on my machine. I take care to support the boards on both the infeed and outfeed side of the machine. From my experience, thickness planing is a pretty demanding operation. It's actual a marvel on how well the portable thickness planers do when you consider the demands placed on them. That's why I think they have higher maintenance compared to other tools you own.

I'll conclude by saying that the machine does do a great job on thickness planing. You will get some snipe 2" from the end of the board. The only problem with the machine is that it does requires more maintenance/repair then you might be expecting. The repairs can be done by you and the replacement parts aren't particularly expensive, just annoying.

I just bought this planer, no setup, just send the boards through,no snipe. The turret depth stop is wonderful if you are planing more than 1 board and need it to be exactly the same. Then you have the material removal indicator that shows how much material you are taking off. I compared this to the Delta 22560, side by side the Delta is not the machine the Dewalt is. I only paid $40.00 more for the Dewalt, and very glad I did. The only thing I didn't like about it is that it should in my opinion come with the dust hood. Charge more and throw it in with the planer, it's a must have accessory. Instead I had to order it and pay $5.00 shipping. If you buy this planer order the dust hood along with it.

Just received the planer and used it before even reading the instructions. I'm a woodworking student at a college. The planer came recommended by instructor and other advanced students own the planer and gave it two thumbs up. The just delivered planer went to school, came out of the box, a quick look at scales and adjustments, turned it on, and the entire class compared this planer performanmce to the industrial capacity planer at the school. Cutting Ash, this DeWalt planer produced a better quality cut and was accurate with thickness removal with only a slight sign of snipe at both ends of the board. Will adjust the infeed and outfeed tables and run some more wood. Will get back to you with results as more board feet are consumed. So far, an easy to use tool with an easy to read manual to go along with it.

The reason for this note is to mske you aware, no signs of the free vacuum dust hood and no signs of the mail-in rebate coupon. I'm waiting for amazon.com to get back to me to tell me what to do. If I have to, I'll contact DeWalt. Got the extra set of knives included with the planer. Easily found replacement parts (knives, belt and even vacuum dust hood) at the local power tool supply store. Will be writing here again, ... soon.

Having used other brands of thickness planers with their typical problems with "snipe" and inefficient design, I have been very pleased witht the features and performance with the DeWalt DW733 thickness planer. The custom furniture and exotic wood inlay work I do requires an extremely high degree of accuracy, often measured in 1/1000's of an inch, which this machine is quite capable of. The thickness adjustment operates smoothly and quickly. The four column locking feature virtually eliminates "snipe" on even the thinnest pieces, which in itself is a cost savings considering the high-priced wood used in the inlay work. I don't have to figure extra length into pieces just so I can cut the snipe off. Blades change out easily producing excellent results immediately, without any special adjustments. These factors make it an excellent value... and I don't know how I was able to get by without one!

Have been woodworking about 20 years now. Purchased the DeWalt 733 Planner over two years ago and it's still running strong. Easy to use operation, adjustments are very accurate. I really like the thick large planner knifes which allow for many resharpenings. Have run through well over 800 board feet of hardwood lumber, mostly red oak and not a single problem with this DeWalt Planner. I keep an extra set of knifes always ready for a quick change of blades, which I might add is fairly easy to do. Thanks DeWalt, this is a heavy-duty workhorse in my woodshop. The model 733 allows me to keep the price of fine hardwood lumber down to a reasonable cost since I purchase all my lumber from a indenpendant sawmill.

This is the first portable planer I have used and it rivals the big stationary shop planers. Have used it on oak, maple, cedar and pine and the only problem I had was minor chipping around knots in the cedar, but I don't know that this wouldn't happen with other machines, cedar is pretty brittle. The maple and oak went thru like butter. I would recommend the DeWalt to anyone looking for such a tool, great machine!

I have owned both the DeWalt as well as the Delta machines that claim to reduce snipe and have found the DeWalt to be the superior machine. Snipe was totally eliminated with the Dewalt and the quality of cut was visibly superior to that produced by the Delta. In addition the feed rollers were more consistant in feeding stock with the Dewalt. Overall the slight price difference was negligible in comparison to the greater quality of the DeWalt