Hi John,

Your experience with machines old and new makes you Prime Candidate no.1 for this question – thanks!

I run a (mostly) one man shop designing and making furniture, and after some years of using a minimax 16″ jointer-planer I’d really like a dedicated planer in the 20-22″ range, though conceivably down to 15″ if budget dictates.

The duty cycle demand is low by factory standards (single person shop, significant hand tool work, a College of the Redwoods sensibility if not necessarily style); 4-5 hours of actual planing in a week would be quite a bit. However, the finish requirement is high – excellent parallelism, very low snipe, handle figured woods with least possible tearout. And the materials planed can be quite demanding as well, from the usual small parts to considerable planks of 8/4 and 12/4 in both domestic and exotic species, with a few (usually domestic) right up to the width capacity of even a 22″. Naturally whatever size I get won’t be big enough for the next board I purchase, but that can’t be helped;-).  

I’ve had excellent experience in a shop with a Byrd Shelix equipped Powermatic 180, but that looks to be a >$6500 investment out here in Oregon, a daunting prospect at this point. Other old iron (e.g. Yates J-180, Oliver 399, Parks 20″etc.) can sometimes be had for a very modest cost and potentially upgraded with a Shelix for a classic workhorse, but the time and resources for restoration and upgrade are a bit of a wild card (e.g. scouring OWWM for parts, custom work from Byrd for the YA-180), I don’t know from experience whether they work well with dust collection systems, and of course they are a pain if you want to move them. I have 3 phase for a Yates bandsaw, so that issue at least is not the end of the world.

Shifting to modern machines, something like the Powermatic 209HH (Taiwanese 20″ w/Byrd) seems like a candidate, but I don’t have enough experience with them to judge whether they can be tuned to perfection and perform well over the long haul. Obviously visual inspection does not inspire the sort of confidence that classic vintage machines do, but I’m not religious about old iron–if a modern item will do the job well, it’s somewhat less expensive, comes equipped with a good cutter and dust collection, is relatively easy to move, and has long tables which offer some convenience.

Based on this description, do you think the Powermatic/Jet/Delta/ShopFox/SteelCity/Grizzlies of the world up to this task, or is old iron the once and future king? I don’t mind taking light passes at all, but when I need to plane the odd 100lb plank for a table top I don’t want the planer to fall out of adjustment after a few passes or have a nervous breakdown and start smoking.

Thanks a bunch,

Pat Megowan