planer advice

[hillbilly]

     MY dad does alot small projects he would like to buy himself a small planer like the ones that DEWALT or RIGID make ,I knpw that some of you out there have used these .Just looking for advice on the best on for a christmas gift.
           thanks HILLBILLY

[beenthere]

I have the DeWalt 12½, and it does a good job and has done good for me. I understand since I bought mine the Rigid is good too. Some of the woodworking mags have featured articles evaluating several models.  Mags such as Wood, Woodsmith, ShopNotes, Workbench, that may be found at your library to read up on the evaluations. I usually only look to see where my DeWalt falls, and it has ranked quite well.  Now there is an updated model (13" I believe) and no longer 'keep track'.

[flip]

I started with the 12 1/2 delta and it worked great until I started feeding it 10X 2 stuff (had to push and pull to get it through).  I got the Dewalt 3 blade and love it but am still running into the same thing so I went to a 20" Griz.  For the normal stuff the Dewalt would be my choice but it's $400.  Definitely need in and out feed rollers for stuff longer than 8'.  Delta knives are cheap $30/set, Dewalt's are about $50/set.  Hope that confuses stuff. ;D

Flip