Posts Tagged ‘Dewalt’

Dewalt DW735 Stand Base Template

Author admin on August 13th, 2008

Recently, I wrote a brief review of the Dewalt DW735 planer. After my initial post, it occurred to me that I had missed something quite important. Recall, the DW735 is a “portable” planer, which is a really positive spin on “you don’t get a stand”. I don’t know about you, but my workshop suffers from a shortage of bench or table space, which means that the DW735 was initially a real thorn in my side. You can buy the DW7350 base from Dewalt, but the base, the absolutely essential DW7351 infeed and outfeed tables, and the planer sum up to about $700, which requires special wife funding approval (for me, at least).

As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to make a good solid base for the DW735. The trickiest part is the part that fits on the bottom of the planer. I made one out of 3/4″ plywood that fits snugly up inside the cast aluminum base of the DW735. At right is a dimensioned drawing of my base, which I drew in Google Sketchup 6. If you’re familiar with Sketchup, I have included my model file here. I cut the whole thing on my table saw, but a jig saw might work better for some of the nooks and crannies.

Originally, I planned to bolt the planer to the plywood base using the holes in the DW735’s aluminum bottom, but with the planer’s considerable heft and because the entire plywood base fits up inside the aluminum base, there was little concern of it jumping off the base and onto the floor.

With my plywood base in order, I set about building the stand for the planer. This really isn’t fancy, but it does the trick nicely. I used some old 2×4’s I had laying around, some scraps of plywood, glue, and pocket hole screws. On the picture at right, the planer feed direction is from right to left. You can see here, and in the next photo, that the piece of plywood we talked so much about only fits under the middle of the planer. The two strips of 3/4″ plywood under the base fit under the wider part of the planer, and are 19.5″ by 2.5″ wide, while the whole stand is 20.5″ wide for a little extra stability.

I finished the stand off with 1/8″ hardboard on the front and back, mostly because I had some around. I think the hardboard also stiffened things up a little, but I’m not sure about that. The bag of Quikrete is key, as the heavy planer on a light stand was a bit top heavy.

I realize, of course, that I won’t be winning any design awards for this thing. It’s not especially pretty, but the price was right (pretty much free) and it’s really stable. The whole stand took me a rainy afternoon, got the planer out of my way, and finally created a place for the one bag of Quikrete left over from my deck project.

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Dewalt DW368 Circular Saw

Author admin on August 5th, 2008

One of the first power tools I purchased was a cheap circular saw. This seemed a reasonable thing to do at the time, as I had little spare change and a small apartment that didn’t present much opportunity for sawing. I’m pretty sure I never made a straight or satisfactory cut with that saw. The base was spongy, the plastic depth adjustment lever broke the first time I used the saw, and there was some sort of plastic aiming device that was effective only for scratching everything it touched.

When I decided to build a deck last year, I realized that the project budget could be stretched just slightly to include a new circular saw. And a new jig saw. And a reciprocating saw. Well, you get the idea. As you might guess after the description of my old circular saw, one of my priorities was eliminating as many cheap plastic parts as possible. I went to stores, removed blades, adjusted depths, told “helpful” employees I’d find them if I needed help, held the saws over my head to test the weight, adjusted the angle of the base, told more employees to go away, etc. In the end, my favorite saw was the Dewalt DW368 light-weight circular saw.

The difference between my old piece of crap and the Dewalt DW368 is nothing short of spectacular. The base is one big magnesium casting that is wonderfully rigid, and all of the adjustments are rock solid. A couple of other favorite items are the bevel adjustment with detents at 22.5° and 45° and the sawdust deflector built into the blade guard. The detents make cutting accurate bevels possible, if still not exactly a breeze, and the sawdust deflector is so sneaky I didn’t even know it was there until I was sawing and a beam of sawdust shot off to the right side and out of the way.

I feel obliged to say something about the motor being strong enough or something like that, but to be honest I never really noticed, which just might be the highest praise there is. I sawed lots of stuff, from nasty wet pressure-treated 2×12’s to composite decking to furniture-grade plywood, and the saw never bogged down or let out so much as a hiccup.

Reflecting on all of the thought I put into the purchase of this saw, it is clear to me now that any of the higher-end circular saws on the market would have probably met my needs. I’m happy with this saw because it’s precise, light weight, and extremely well built. It’s also pretty affordable, at around $100.

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Dewalt DW735 Planer

Author admin on July 21st, 2008

For a non-professional wood worker, buying a planer is a big deal. Cheap ones are flimsy and promise horrendous snipe, rough surfaces, and endless sanding. More expensive planers are, well, expensive. In the middle is the Dewalt DW735, a well-designed, reasonably priced, relatively portable, two-speed, three-blade planer that promises glassy smooth surfaces and virtually no snipe. As you might expect, no tool has ever entered my shop with higher hopes and expectations.

For the most part, the DW735 delivers. The two-speed transmission and three-blade cutter head add up to 179 cuts per inch, which leads to super smooth surfaces. The DW735 also has an absurdly powerful blower built in that removes chips from the cutting surface and forcibly ejects those chips from the back of the planer (more on this later). The scale on the right side of the infeed is easy to read, precise, and perfectly calibrated out of the box. The “depthometer” on the front of the unit is extremely useful, as it tells you how much you’re about to attempt to remove.

If you’ve looked around the internet for the DW735, you might have noticed that it’s often pictured with shiny, flip-up infeed and outfeed tables. That’s because it’s mostly useless without them. Plan on $50 for the pair.

People seem to refer to the DW735 and other planers in its class as “portable”. I guess that’s technically true in the same sense that buildings, bulldozers, and boulders are portable. I’ve personally found the 92 lb. cube to be unpleasant to move and I hope not to for a long time.

Three of the most contentious features of the DW735 are the $50-$75 “disposable” blades. Many have stated that the blades were ruined within a few board feet of brand new, while others claim to plane thousands of board feet without replacing the blades. My experience is somewhere in between. After observing that the blades are quite flimsy, I committed to minimize stress on them by using the lower feed speed for hard woods and taking off only around 1/32″ to 1/16″ per pass. If you’re really nervous about the blades, take comfort in that Infinity Cutting Tools sells high speed steel (HSS) blades for the DW735 that can be resharpened.

I don’t consider myself to be a wimp when it comes to noisy tools, but the DW735 is light-fixture-shaking, spouse-irritating, neighbor-waking loud. Easily the loudest tool I own, I believe that any use without hearing protection would certainly result in instant hearing loss and a serious headache.

If you don’t own a dust collector, the DW735 (or any planer for that matter) presents something of a problem. I hooked the planer up to my 12 gallon shop vac only to realize that the blower in the planer has more blowing whoop than my shop vac has sucking whoop. I also tried a fancy cyclone trashcan lid, which relies on suction to stay stuck to the trashcan. The DW735 made short work of that idea, blowing the lid clean off the can, even with the shop vac running. In short, you need a dust collector. If you just considered letting the chips fly, I don’t recommend it. I planed a short walnut board with the included diffuser about 6 months ago and I’m still finding little brown chips.

In the end, the DW735 is a solid value, offering more features, capability, and quality than anything in its price range, but given the opportunity for a redo, I might hold out for a more expensive, “stationary” unit with an induction motor and blades that are meant to last. You can find another review at newwoodworker.com.

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