I just had to share this with everyone on Knots. I’ve been trying to mill some rough 4/4+ cherry lumber trim on my house. I milled up 6 boards each between 4-6 feet long. with my DJ-20 and Dewalt 733 planer. It was a lot of work and I was about to give up when I was talking to my cabinet maker, he suggested that I bring some of it over to his shop to mill the next time I went ove to talk about my kitchen cabinets which he is building. I jumped at the chance, I’ve been envious of his big Martin machines. It was really cool to play with machines of this caliber, here are my quick impressions.

Jointer: DJ-20 vs. Martin T54: I always thought that the DJ-20 was my first real professional grade tool. But the huge table and amount of power on Martin jointer was incredible, it let me take 1/16th of an inch off with each pass, including a 10 inch wide board!

Planer: Dewalt 733 vs. Martin T45: Again, no comparison here, my portable planer versus a big stationary planer.

Delta Contractor Saw vs. Martin T73: Wow, this has to be the mother of all table saws! I think that its bigger than my garage shop. I did notice however, that when I was ripping a two inch strip off a nine inch wide board, the tension from the cut off piece would bind so tight againt the riving knife that I could barely push the board through. This happens with my Biesemeyer splitter, but I didn’t know that I’d have the same problems on the riving knife since its so close to the blade.