Customer Reviews

Makita 2012NB 12-Inch Planer with Interna-Lok Automated Head Clamp

5 star:		(82)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am a professional remodeler and in the past five years I have burnt out three Delta planers. Twice, the feed rollers gave up and the last one apparently suffered a major internal failure. I have had the Makita now for two months and it has been flawless as I would expect. We plane some tough stuff like Ipe so we definitely give these things a workout. If it is still flawless in a year, I will give it a fifth star. I appreciate the ergonomics of this well, thought out machine. I am glad that Makita has eliminated a cutterhead lock. I personally couldn't care less about "snipe", of which this machine creates very little. We plane long and then cut to size on the miter saw. Don't you? I do have one question ..., is there any reason why I can't buy replacement blades online?

Okay, so I'm a year late, this is one VERY good planer! It continues to perform like new, with only blade changes. I have it hooked up in my shop and have run hundreds of feet of maple, pine, poplar, Ipe, oak, even plywood and MDF. It just does its thing. Very uneventful, I like that. That's what I pay for. The only downside is that it makes justifying a 15" Powermatic planer difficult!

So here were are now, its 2004 and the little bugger just keeps going! I may never get that new planer. What can I say, after, I don't know, five or six thousand feet of various hardwoods, no changes to date! See you next year!

What can I say? Late again! So here we are almost eight years later and the little SOB just keeps running! New blades, vacuum occasionally, lube the posts if I think of it and it just keeps going. If it ever dies, I'll let you know!

I received my new Makita 2012B Portable Planer for Christmas. I had researched all the available models and felt that the Makita had the edge on paper. Putting it to the reality check test, a friend and I ran over 100 board feet of quartersawn white oak through the planer, then finished up by using the system to shave down a walnut inlay in ash. I was really impressed by the performance! No snipe, very smooth surfaces, quiet operation, and ease of use were at the top of my list of favorable impressions. We especially liked the depth stop option for reproducibly machining multiple boards to the same thickness. Too early to tell how the planer will hold up with time. I will write a follow-up after a year of use. The only objection I have to the tool is that for the price, Makita should include the dust hood. It is essential and has to be ordered separately from Makita.

I spent a lot of time looking at portable planers. They all had something I liked and didn't. The Makita 2012NB had everything I was looking for. Lower the cutting head down until the depth pin moves, set the dial indicator to zero, then lower the cutting head to the depth you want. Easy, fast, accurate and quiet. It has an adjustable rod for making plaining more than one board to the same thickness and can be set to any thickness you want. The interna-lock head keeps snipe to a minimum and I'm happy not to have to mess with a head lock. It seems to be constructed to last a long time but I haven't used it long enough to say for certain yet. It is more expensive but I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again. The only complaint I have is for the price why didn't Makita include dust shut with dust collector connection?

This planer is excellent, giving both reliable service with new features. No cutterhead lock to worry about, higher RPM than the old planer (which was still great), and beefed up to 15amp. The Makita has on-board storage, for tools, generous infeed & outfeed trays, and is truly lighter than the rest. Powerful and extremely smooth finishes. Popular Woodworking lists it as snipe equal to that of a floor model, best of the benchtops. I agree!

Much like other reviewers, I have a small shop and make personal furniture and cabinetry. I too agonized over the purchase of a planer. The obvious dilemma is between a floor model 15" and a portable 12". The Makita is more costly than most of the portables, but less than half of the stationary 15" models.

After reading of the trouble others have had with the Delta (and my own negative experiences with Delta) I decided to spring the extra bucks for the Makita quality.

Great decision. This planer performs flawlessly. As long as you keep each pass shallow, snipe is of no concern, and I also agree that you have to cut the ends off the stock anyway. Snipe won't mean a thing if you have a board end check on you after you have completed a project.

I too reserve the other 5th star for longevity, as I have only had the planer for several months. As for the dust hood-I plan to save myself the money and just make my own. Any true woodworker can handle the fabrication necessary for a rectangular plenum with a round outlet-it's held on by a couple of thumb screws.

I say you can't beat this planer.

I recently read an article in one of the Popular woodworking comparing many of the 12" bench top planers. I had my heart set on a Delta, since my experience so far had been good. Boy did that article change my mind in a hurry. They has only good things to say about this planer. The only downside was the price. They said that they loved the planer, just couldn't justify the price. Well, I could. I'm sick of getting exacty what you pay for. I'm willing to spend a little more and get top quality. If you are too, this is the planer for you. Got it (from the tool-crib BTW) on Sat and spent the next day planing some 4/4 red oak. Beautiful finish !! A fine sanding is all that's required. Also, the stop remembers what your last, final, thick- ness was, which came in handy as I needed another 3/4 board and had already put the planer away. Snipe was a minimum, maybe 2-3 inches on the feed end and, as long as you're careful, none on the back end. Take some advice, get yourself a nice pair or dial calipers. I got a 6" Starrett from the tool crib here and it, in conjunction with the planer will give you the _exact_ thickness that you need. I'm sick of going to the lumber yard and ordering 1/2", and some are a little strong of 1/2" and some a little shy and none of your dados are fit like the test cut did. Another cool feature is the thickness dial on the crank. Using the calipers, you find that you need another 1/32" off the side. Set the 1/32" mark on the thickness dial, turn the crank until the '0' matches up with the mark and it takes off the required amount, no more, no less.

After much research, I purchased this planer as a replacement for my venerable Makita 2030N Planer-Jointer, which I had for about 20 years. I was forced to sell it 3 years ago to help pay for a divorce attorney ---- adding injury to insult. The 2030N (which weighed 350 pounds) is a tough act to follow, but the 2012NB (minus jointer function) is equal to the task, and in many ways superior. I was impressed with the total lack of backlash in the head adjustment ---- important if you are trying to sneak up on a required thickness. I have learned that you can eliminate snipe on small pieces, if you feed them through on an angle -- ie: by first feeding a corner of the piece into the cutter. However, I have not had a problem with snipe on wider or longer pieces, if you feed them carefully aligned, at the beginning of the cut.
Some of the other reviews make far too much fuss over the dust collector hood (Makita 193036-7). I purchased mine from my local Makita dealer for $22.00, less money than a jug of good bourbon. It is a well designed injection molded part with a heavy duty steel angle bracket for easy mounting or removal. The part is Makita blue and looks real nice on the planer. I don't understand why any wood worker, worth his or her salt, would cobble up a nice piece of machinery with a piece of furnace duct etc.. Also, if you use a 2 1/2" shop vac for dust pick up, a shop vac hose coupler, with a few turns of aluminum duct tape, will fit snugly inside the Makita hood and make a really slick conversion. Incidentally, the planer is much quieter than my shop vac so I don't have to wear my ear protectors. They don't get much better than this!!!
PS: Sept. 17, 2007 One of the reviewers suggested waxing the feed table. I have tried this, using some Brie wax I use for furniture finishing. It helps a lot when you feed stock into the planer and seems to reduce sniping in the process. I would think that any hard wax would work well in this application.

The quality of this tool stands out when I first pulled it out of the box. But the one thing that blew me away the most was how much quieter this planer is compared to my old Delta. You had to run quickly for the earmuffs with the Delta. I can actually have a conversation with someone when the Makita was running. Simply amazing.......And the stop adjustment which allows for repeated cuts to any height, cuts the cake! Somebody give me some wood!!

I was drawn to the Makita because of the many positive reviews here at Amazon. It is indeed a good unit, but owners have noted a few difficulties.

Foremost is the problem with collecting all the shavings. The shavings from a board are 500 times the volume of the original wood. This fluffy mass will clog up every place there is a restriction or a rough transition. It will fill up your collection container really fast and if that fills up, then the air flow slows down and the entire duct will clog up. When that happens, you have to stop, disassemble and clear things.

The only cure is to make sure all of your ducts are connected with smooth, snag-free fittings and that you stop and empty your collection container before it fills up. This does slow you down, but it is the nature of the machine, of any brand, and being pre-emptive will save you time in the long run.

See my reviews of the Makita collection hood and dust control for more detail.

Some users complain about having to pull their wood through, slow cutting and similar problems. The secret is to wax the bed, the smooth part under the cutter. I use CRC lube, sprayed onto a towel and applied sparingly to the metal. Do know that products that contain silicon will contaminate the wood and prevent proper finishing. Some use Johnson's wax. This step makes all the difference in the world, but you have to do it fairly often because if you do not, then the problem will appear while you are in the middle of a board and make divots in your work.

It seems as though the wood actually sticks to the bottom plate when it is pressed down and the smooth rollers just cannot push the wood through.

This problem is more prevalent with soft woods like pine and redwood, and much less so with maple.

Snipe is controlled in two ways. First, is to just be careful about how you feed the wood into the Makita and how you take it out. Don't let it sag or lift it up too much to prevent that sag. Some people just leave a few inches extra and cut them off when the planing is done. I do not like doing that, but I do in special cases.

The other anti-snipe protection is built into the machine. Use that threaded stop rod. Push it all the way down and give it a twist to really lock it. This also gives perfectly equal thickness when planing several boards for a glue-up panel. That is a very good thing.

This all seems to work pretty well. Snipe is not much of a problem for me now.

Portable planers are nicer to use when mounted on a moveable base. I reviewed one if you are interested.

There is no substitute for huge industrial machines with conveyer belts and giant shaving collection systems. Compromises are made in the construction of bench-top machines. The Makita will plane boards just fine if you know how to use it properly.

I bought a Makita 2012 a few weeks ago and immediately ran a couple of thousand feet of Western Red Cedar through it. I know, that's not exactly a tough test, but it performed flawlessly, quietly (would you believe that it is quieter than a Skilsaw? it is) and smoothly. Literally right out of the box: there was no set up time, there was no snipe, there was no chatter, there was no slipping, there was no clogging. Just really smooth boards, planed exactly the way I wanted them, quickly and easily. There are several other reviews (posted at Amazon) that address the 2012's long term performance and ease of use and I found them very helpful and I've found nothing to indicate these reviews are not 100% accurate.

Before buying this machine, I read many reviews on Amazon, especially the 1, 2 or 3 star (out of 5) reviews, for various planers. Reviews simply indicate patterns. (For example, read the reviews of the DeWalt planer, and you'll discover that the blades don't last very long, even according to the users that love the machine.) Less than optimal reviews (1 and 2 stars) indicate the problems with the products and these reviews are what convinced me to buy the Makita. In the case of the Makita 2012, the consistent "problems" written about involve lots of concern over the dust boot, a few concerns about feed roller slippage and a few concerns about shipping damage. I'll address each below. Please note that I'm taking the time to write this because I think that the Makita 2012 is a great tool which may be getting short shrift from reviewers concerned about all the wrong things.

First, the dust boot. Full disclosure: I purchased the dust boot but it did not arrive yet so I can't comment on its performance. I can however address another issue raised by some of the other reviews: the outlet on the dust boot is the wrong size for a shop vac. This is ridiculous. Run one board 6" wide by 12' long though the planer a couple of times and you'll create enough shavings to clog up an industrial sized shop vac; you'll be lucky if you don't damage shop vac or the planer by jamming them up with shavings. The reason the boot is not sized for a shop vac hose is because it's designed to be used with a dust collector. Shop vacs have their place on the jobsite, but controlling the shavings from a planer is a mis-use of the tool. I would downgrade the rating on any planer that had a boot outlet sized for a shop vac. (I will attempt to update this review and address issues raised regarding the 90 degree bend on the boot once I've connected it to my DUST COLLECTOR and run some boards through.)

Second: feed roller slippage. As with any tool, the Makita 2012 will require periodic maintenance. This should include cleaning pitch and/or sap and general dirt/grime off the feed tables and rollers. As other reviews indicate, cleaning the tables and/or rollers works in most of the slippage cases. To my way of thinking, it is disengenuos to downrate a tool because the user did not treat it right.

Third: shipping damage. This is the one that really gets my blood pumping. Downrate a tool because the shipper dropped it and the handle is broken? This is not a problem with the tool! The Makita 2012 is a heavy tool (40-odd pounds which is actually fairly light for a 12" planer) and it was delivered to me via truck. Normal protocol when receiving anything from a third-party shipper is to check for damage before accepting the delivery, including opening all boxes to inspect the contents. If the product is damaged, don't accept it, refuse it. This is so that the manufacturer can provide you with an undamaged tool at the expense of the party who damaged it, whether it was shipper, wholesaler, distributor or retailer.

Bottom line is don't give a tool 1 star because you don't have the correct complimentary tools or because your delivery acumen and your maintenance procedures each earn half a star. I gave this tool 5 stars because it earned 5 stars. Now I have to earn 5 stars by taking care of it.