So I had some Christmas money from Dad to spend. Dawn suggested a new rug for the living room, which suggestion I found utterly horrifying. First, because I like the current rug a lot, even if Dawn doesn’t. But mostly because I didn’t want to add Christmas gift money to the general household revenue fund. I wanted something special.<\/p>\n
Luckily, whatever rug(s) Dawn had\/has her eye on were\/is\/are apparently a lot more than what I had to spend. So she, budget director but with a heart, gave me her blessing to buy whatever I wanted. And, as it happens, there was a little something that had caught my eye.<\/p>\n
I have at various times had on my Amazon wish list a planer. First I think I had the Delta, replaced at some point by the Grizzly. Both in the $200 range. Well, the Grizzly more like $250, since it was $225, but since it’s not sold by Amazon but rather by Grizzly, there’d be shipping charges on top of that.<\/p>\n
But recently a Palmgren planer<\/a> had popped up on my radar. I hadn’t especially ever heard of Palmgren before, or what I’d seen maybe just hadn’t much registered. I think maybe I’d noticed the benchtop jointer before. But this planer was suddenly up on Amazon for $199. They said its original list price was $529, but who knows what list price means in these cases.<\/p>\n Well, I suppose we can compare to the Delta and the Grizzly. The Delta is $199 from a list price of $317. And the Grizzly is just $225, with no other price, list or otherwise. (But it’s available for the same $225 at grizzly.com, so let’s just go with that as the list price.) My dream planer would be the Dewalt DW734, but that’s list $678 on sale for $399. Way too much.<\/p>\n So it seemed like the Palmgren for $199 was a really good deal, although that was for the 84114, whereas the 84112 was on sale for $129. But somehow, I don’t know, I just didn’t trust that 84112. Seemed too cheap.<\/p>\n I read the Amazon reviews, and checked out discussions on the Woodnet forums. There was this one guy Earl Cowles, EZ<\/a> on Amazon and EZEZ<\/a> on the Woodnet forums. He was really enthusiastic about the 84114, but almost too enthusiastic. Almost like being-paid-to-say-these-things enthusiastic. But he seemed to be an otherwise honest guy, having given a fairly positive but not totally overjoyed review to a Bosch miter saw on Amazon back in November. He’s much newer to the Woodnet forums, so I couldn’t really tell much else there.<\/p>\n Finally I just bit the bullet and ordered the damn thing, the 84114. I called my brother to see if he could accept shipment at his house first though. I usually have stuff delivered at work, but Amazon said the shipping weight on this thing was 99 pounds. I didn’t think Anita the receptionist would be too pleased with that. And I sure didn’t want them just dropping it off for me at home, not in my neighborhood. Luckily, Rob works out of his home, and he agreed to let me ship it there.<\/p>\n That was Sunday when I ordered it. And it arrives at his house today at 2:13 p.m. I’m going over on Saturday to pick it up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So I had some Christmas money from Dad to spend. Dawn suggested a new rug for the living room, which suggestion I found utterly horrifying. First, because I like the current rug a lot, even if Dawn doesn’t. But mostly because I didn’t want to add Christmas gift money to the general household revenue fund. … Continue reading Planer<\/span>