Craftsman - 21758 12.5 inch bench top planer (Rating: 4)

Decided to purchase a bench top planer to use in my limited space garage (car, boat, mower, snow blower, kids bikes). My only experience with planers has been with grizzly and powermatic 220v units. I researched which bench top unit to buy for a few weeks. My factors were cost and availability. I make a lot of small projects and typically work with rough cut lumber in 2-4' lengths.

The planer was easy to setup out of the box. Tables are small but have adjusters to help with snipe. If you don't pay attention snipe is around 1.5" to 2.5" on the trailing edge. I found if I make the last few passes very shallow (sub 1/64th" I could get rid of the snipe on the majority of boards. Somehow I nicked the blade in the first 5 boards I ran, so I spun them around. The blade change and setup is really easy with great access.

The dust collection worked better than expected when hooked to my 1 hp grizzly dust collector. I quickly realized I need a separator when planing poplar!

So far I have run red oak, white oak, maple, cherry, ash, and poplar. It performs very well as long as you don't try to take to big of a cut. This is especially true in the white oak and ash. The boards I ran were all in the 2' to 4' range and between 7 and 10" wide. So far I am happy with the quality and finish. If I need to run long boards I will just take them to process on my brother in laws grizzly or my cousins powermatic.

For the price (I had Sears points and a $35 off of $300 coupon) I am happy with the purchase.