6 Amp Corded 3-1/4 in. Hand Planer with Dust Bag

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I’m very pleased with this tool I build furniture and it’s great to shim cabinet doors even house doors works great on any wood .. blades easy to change

I purchased this product from Home Depot to cut down a few doors that were binding after swelling up in the Spring-Summer heat. The doors are not solid wooden doors unfortunately or I would have just used my trusty block plane or oscillating tool to take them down to the appropriate size. So I just needed something cheap and quick to use for a few passes on these doors. Cheap usually describes Ryobi tools and the frustratingly stingy amount of information missing from their manuals. Bosch or DeWalt are my usual trust go-to tool brands, but I gave the Ryobi the benefit of the doubt in this case and purchased this planer. Let's see how it went: PACKAGING: Consists of the planer, 2 reversible double edged blades, a rabbet guide, blade wrench, dust bag, manual, and a handy tool bag. The tool bag is nice but be careful if you're one who likes to toss bags of tools into your truck because it's a little bit thin when it comes to protecting the planer. ASSEMBLY OF PRODUCT: You'll have to do some prerequisite items such as attaching the dust bag, adjusting the depth knob, and attaching the edge guide as needed. MADE IN / ASSEMBLED IN: This product is made in China. QUALITY: One of the biggest 'problems' if you will that people report, is that planers take chunks or gouges out of the material. A few things to take note of: 1. Make sure to start and bring the tool up to full operating speed before you push it into the material you want to plane and, 2. Take your time and take multiple passes across the material and do not get aggressive with trying to take too much material off at one time. The manual gives very pertinent advice when it states: When you begin planing a rough piece of material, the planer will only remove the high spots at first. Successive passes will remove more and more material. By removing no more than 1/64 in. with each pass, you will achieve the smoothest finish, even from the roughest workpiece. Always begin by making test cuts in scrap wood to make sure that the planer is removing the desired amount of wood. While this tool will not give you quality cuts or longevity from the blades that other more expensive planers will, it seems to firmly give you the results expected for this price range of planer. Again, going slow and going deliberately as well as solidly securing the piece of material you are working on - will likely give you far better results, even from the cheapest doors you are trying to cut down. Overall, this tool gave the quality results I expected from this price range of tool. Having a spare set of blades on hand is recommended if you will be planing anything that has nails or is significantly aged. The tool can be intimidating for beginner DIY'ers due to the noise and knowing that there is usually no going back if you make a mistake with this planer. This tool reminds me of the old belt sanders we used to use. Make a mistake and you'll quickly find out that there are no mulligans. So just take your time and practice on some scrap pieces of wood and you'll get a better result.

This thing works great if you need to quickly chew down some material that's no wider than its foot, or don't particularly care how smooth of a cut it is. I was able to put a smooth, relatively square edge on a board that I simply broke in half down the middle. However, the original reason I bought this was with the hopes of smoothing out live edge slabs and tabletops. In that regard, this tool does not fulfill my needs. As others have mentioned, out of the box it will leave large gouges on your surface. If you have a lot of material to remove and don't mind spending a lot of time sanding, then this will probably work fine for you. This is the only power planer I've used, but my understanding is that others have similar limitations (although, as with this one, the reviews are mixed on that). Another problem is that out of the box the adjustments for the front shoe are off by a significant amount. In the attached photo the dial is set to 0, but you can clearly see there is a gap between the top of the front shoe and the rear shoe. I have to adjust the front shoe down to the 1/36th mark before it levels out. Also, the blades are horribly unaligned. Because the front shoe was so far off, the blades also were both adjusted far too high so even at 0, it would still cut a significant amount of material. Furthermore, because of the misalignment, I was getting a tremendous amount of snipe at the ends of the boards. I adjusted the blades so that when the front & rear shoes are level the blades would take no bite... almost. Almost because the blade adjustment is also very inaccurate. You have to loosen 3 jam-nuts and adjust a hex bolt at either end of the blade. Once you get it where you want it, you tighten the jam-nuts back down. The problem is that when you tighten the nuts the blade moves a little. It's not much, but it is enough to put one end of the blade at a slightly different height from the other end. I'm guessing this is where the gouges are coming from when running this across flat surfaces. The edge guide isn't 100% square, but it's also not very sturdy so even if it were square you wouldn't be able to line it up perfectly square anyway. It does help you keep things relatively flat and square though if "close enough" is what you're after. I'm aware there are ways to square up the front & rear shoes, and given enough tweaking I'm sure I could get the blades perfectly square, but for my time & money, this just wasn't the tool for me. Overall this is a decent tool. If you don't need 100% accuracy, this is a great buy. If you need something to level out large surfaces, maybe stick with a hand plane.

of leveling out our subfloor joints. I hooked a 90 degree PVC adapter/reducer (1 1/4" x 1") to the shop vac and voila, no mess. I just needed to team out the inside a bit with the dremel.

Started using it on my floor. Works great. Good handing.

Great product, great price

This lightweight player is awesome it’ll eat up chew up and spit the water out and it whatever surface you’re trying to level level truly an awesome machine

Im new to power tools and am not the most skilled DIY’r. I tried using it for a wood slab im hoping to make into an epoxy resin countertop. Planer left huge gouges. The planer is heavy and might take much practice. Not likely the best tool for the unskilled hand.

The Ryobi planer turned out be far better than expected. It works great for edging and truing down wood,( I make exotic boxes out of spalted logs. My main reason for a planer). My past experience with door edge planers was that they were unruly and dangerous. Not the cast with this one. Smooth adjustment and good discharge ports. You need not buy another brand, their too pricey. But, you need to check out this video before you buy. https://youtu.be/_a1HCqK5i-A

Easy to use and very handy!