WEN PL1303 15-Amp 13-Inch Three-Blade Benchtop Thickness Planer , Black

I'm a retired professional with a Felder 741 combination slider, planer and shaper. If you know Felder, then I don't have to tell you they are one of the industry standards for accuracy. However, I'm sick of building a piece of fine furniture, only to discover that one last piece is too thick, or whatever. That means raising the jointer bed, cranking up the planer head, and in the process losing whatever was setup on the saw.Also, I've wanted a spiral cutter for the planer, but $1,000+ makes no sense when the Felder knives already do a superb job, and of course I would still have the changeover problem. I'v thought about a bench top planer, but that's also around a grand, so not happening.Anyway, I saw some reviews on the Wen 13" with a segmented cutter head. Odd looking cutter head, and the inserts are HSS instead of carbide, but at $400 for the one speed I decided to take a risk. I just unpacked and plugged in this morning. Connected to my 3hp Onida Gorilla using a 4" hose. I then ran a test using 1.5" air dried red oak.Results were a surprise, to say the least. Beautiful finish on both sides, even at the one speed, which is quite fast. No sign of of any cutters out of alignment. Almost no snipe - I did not adjust the tables. Dust collector gets most, but not all, chips. ( I also tried connecting a shop vac which was not that great, so I'd recommend a dust collector).Segmented cutter heads are supposed to be quiet, but brush motor noise makes it about as loud as a knife machine, at least in my opinion. Hearing muffs required. This is not a complaint. For $400 you can't have everything.Bottom line, I'm glad I bought this thing. Once the four sided cutters are dull I might upgrade to carbide, but we'll see. Sometimes HHS produces a better finish than carbide, so I might just buy another set of those, depending on how long the originals last. The question now is longevity. Machine seems solid and weighs 80 pounds, so for my needs it will probably be OK. We will see.Bottom line, doe a great job for less than half the price of a name brand.The machine turned out to be a pleasant surprise, producing an excellent finish.

This Wen planer is my first experience with a feed through planer. Since smooth cedar boards are expensive and I wanted to build a horizontal cedar fence the overall cost would have been prohibitive. Buying rough cut cedar is an order of magnitude less expensive than the smooth variety so I took a flyer on using a planer. Wow, I’m glad I did. Operation is straight forward and after a few test pieces I began planing the 4x4 cedar posts and a quantity of 6”x1”x96” boards. The high speed steel cutter blades lasted for about 10 or so boards (planed both sides), rotated them and did 10 more. Then I replaced the cutters (easy but takes time) with carbide blades and went on my way. I like how the necessary tools are attached right to the machine. Operation of the Wen planer is straight forward and self explanatory so even a newbie can start putting out good results. I also purchased two roller stands and spent some time making sure the boards went through straight, level and true. Result was no snipe which surprised me since many YT videos are how to prevent snipe. Setting up measurement and adjustment is straight forward and little effort. About 1/16” is most I would remove at one time and this worked out well for me. I also purchased the Wen planer stand which gives a solid base for the planer. As the photo shows the results were satisfying with only one pass. What was a collection of rough cut cedar boards and posts became a really attractive set of lumber that looks great. Well worth the money, even for this one project, and I recommend this planer. There will be more projects now that I see how great the results were. Now to get as excited to dig the post holes.

My wife and I recently bought a CNC woodworking router and have started a part time business with it. We bought a lot of pine slab wood from an Amish saw mill and were using a heavy duty sander to finish the boards. This planer has made that job SO much easier. It leaves very little effort and leaves the wood very smooth so it takes very little finish sanding. You do get snipe near both ends of the wood, so either have to leave the boards long enough to cut the snipe off or use scrap boards of the same thickness in front and behind so the snipe is left on those boards. The directions say you can adjust the feed trays to stop this but I haven't really tried that. There is also a lot of sawdust scrap, so it really must be hooked up to a shop vac, which works very well. This planer is a little wider than a lot of them and even though 13 inches is kind of limiting, wider planers are MUCH more expensive. We've used it quite a bit over the last few months and it's still going as strong as when we got it without having to change blades yet. Very happy with it.