Is This INSANE Planer Upgrade Worth $1,000?

this planer cost $600 but this planer cost $1,600 what's the difference they look the same on the outside because they are it's on the inside is where you're going to see the major difference but is it worth $1,000 let's find out in this video we're going to test out the differences in these two we're going to see which one planes better smoother and faster should be about the same speed but we should get better results from the shelix we're also going to test the sound difference because a lot of people will say these are much quieter we'll figure out exactly how much quieter they are and if you've ever nicked one of these straight blades you know how long it takes to swap those around or if you're just changing blades we're going to figure out how fast it'll take on each one to swap one blade around and then finally we'll decide whether it's worth the extra money to upgrade to that bar shelix for most people let's go I've had this planer for over 5 years and it has been an absolute Workhorse in the shop and I have played a ton of boards with this planer over the years it's been Rock Solid this is one of the best woodworking planers or benchtop planers you can purchase as a garage or small shop woodworker it will be the Workhorse and will last you for years it is a proven planer so what makes this one $1,000 more expensive well it is the absolute awesome bird shelix helical cutter head and you've seen this in a previous video of mine on the Oliver planer that also had the bird shelix cutterhead in there I did a comparison of this planer versus the Oliver well now it's time to find out what apples to app really looks like because on the Oliver as I pointed out this kind of has a cheaply made shell where this has an absolute robust shell and how I got this one is quite an interesting story we'll cover later first and foremost when you unbox this planner you're going to get exactly what you would get if you went to a big box store ordered on Amazon and bought the regular 735 it comes well packaged and it looks just like it would anywhere else it is really heavy at about 92 lb so you may need some help getting this thing out of the box instead of up properly one thing you should know before we get too far into this if you already have a 735 you can actually order the aftermarket or the addon bird shelix head to put into your existing planer and it'll take you about 2 hours roughly based on what I've read or heard from bird themselves so if you want to DIY install this you can absolutely do that and save quite a bit of money but most people like the Plug and Play of already having it installed everything's basically tuned up ready to go out of the box I like that myself when you get this out of the box you're going to want to look inside because I did so it's pretty easy to take this top off it takes four bolts to take it off and then you have the dust cover that comes right off with three of those red long red screws and then you're able to reveal what's inside and it is the bird Sheik's head one thing to note is you cannot power this on with the switch with this top off unless you press the safety switch which you should not do but if you're like me I wanted to see what all the fuss is about so I opened it up and looked inside and it's pretty cool now if you buy this ad on you'll get five extra teeth for your bird shelix as well as a screwdriver and bit to change those blades around if you needed and if you like stickers you'll also get a couple of stickers functionally both of these perform exactly the same the way you raise and lower the bed etc now the only thing you have to think about is if you buy the dw735x which means it comes with two beds and it comes with an extra set of blades then that's the package you'll get so if you order from Amazon at 735x you'll get those extras if you order from bird you're not getting these tables unless you add them on separately and I asked them specifically why they weren't included at this price and they said most people don't want the beds so if you don't want the beds you have nothing to worry about but if you do throw those in as an extra add-on I personally like having the beds if you purchase this without the beds the beds are super easy to install it takes four bolts per side and the top one is the springloaded so that you can take these beds on and off easily these are very easy to install takes minimal effort takes about 2 3 minutes to get them both on one interesting thing is even though it has the bird shelix helical head installed they left the sticker on there that has the old blade thing on there I kind of think they would remove that but there are a few reasons why you would want a shelix helical cutter head number one cut quality you're going to get a really smooth cut quality we'll test these both out in just a minute but it'll give you a nice almost a 220 grit sanded feel to the finish another reason is if you're planting figured wood like Curly Maple for example you won't have any tear out because the way the cutter knives on the shelix head comes in contact with the wood it's l cutting the wood versus a straight knife like this is basically chopping the wood another advantage of the shelix cutter head that I've noticed from the Oliver is the fact that it doesn't stop up the dust collection on this old straight knife one when I was planing ambrosia maple it kept getting stopped up in the dust collection because it was cutting long pieces off as you see in this video here it just kept stopping up and then it would just blow out the bottom of this planer and cause a giant mess that doesn't happen with the sheela's head because of the way it's cutting the wood you see here it's much finer pieces you're also going to get a Big Time Savings if you ever have to change these blades around on the straight knif version you have to take off eight bolts so that you can take off the top piece and then rotate that blade or change that blade if you've ever got it nicked with a nail a staple or even sometimes knots will cause these blades to get nicked and then that puts lines in your plain board and then you have to sand that off it's just more work it takes almost 5 minutes to swap these around but if you have the bird she lets cut her head it only takes about 30 seconds to rotate that blade and get it back in then you're back in business that is a huge Time Savings and a lot less money overall if you nick these blades very often or have to change them out more often these you can just swap around pretty quick you're getting four edges per blade on the bird shelix and there's tons of these on there I'm too lazy to count them all but you can see there's a bunch and they do include five spare blades in case they get damaged in some way now have a few pieces of boards here we're going to play and see if we can find any difference I got this piece of Walnut it's got a little bit of a rough finish to it I want to throw it through the the bird shelix first and see if he can get a nice smooth finish with a pass or two we also have some Maple here which is notorious for tear out a lot of times on planers I want to see how they perform in each and then just some regular Spruce Pine board that you may get from your local Home Store just to see how well it planes on either one now a lot of times when you playing with the straight knives what you'll get is a little bit of lines in your board where those knives are chopping at at you can see that where this one was previously plain it has those lines I want to see if that can be taken away away with the bird shelix and then finally we'll see what the sound level is between the two planning each one see if there's that major of a difference I don't think there's going to be enough that you still won't need hearing protection we'll try it out one of the things I absolutely love about the DeWalt dw735 is this removal scale that you'll see it gives you an idea of about how much you're going to take off each pass no other planer benchtop planer that I've used has that feature and this is a very good accurate scale you can also increase or decrease the amount of cuts per inch that you're getting so you get a fine or more rough finish I like that on this planer now I want to point something out that I was pretty impressed with straight out of the gate is this is butter smooth like this is a sanded finish quality finish you can see that the board is a little bit uneven where I've got a little bit of rough left here and here as well as when it was going through I could tell that it was not flat I would need to Joint this board if I wanted to do it properly but just to get an overall idea I like this finish now let's run it through the other planer and see if we get a similar finish with the rest of this [Music] [Applause] roughness wow wow did you hear the difference it was ah I can't wait to put the meter on that that's going to be majorly different interesting the old planer with the straight knives tore out the Walnut a big gouge right there peeled that right out the other one didn't do it and I can feel the difference you can feel the difference where the planer went uh the straight knife planer versus the shelix helical head and you can see their straight knife Mark there kind of interesting and the sound difference wo all right one more pass through the straight knife planer I can still feel a little bit of a difference but it's not like massive different but you can feel a little bit of the difference between that cutter head and this cutter head that one's a much more fine finish both of them set at number one downloaded this little app called decel X or something like that it's supposed to pick up the decel level in here you can see as I'm talking it also jumps up and down so we're going to test this out with the planer while I have my hearing protection on before we start the sound test it should be noted I'm going to try to remove about a 30 second of material on each one on each species so we get a very similar result as far as how much work it's having to do on each [Music] one when planting the Walnut with the straight knives we got up to8 DB let's see what we get up to on the bird [Music] shelix actually think it was quieter when it wasn't planing when it started planing it dropped down to like 86 or so it was about 88 before it started planing it is significantly quieter versus the straight planter knives on Walnut the Finish is smooth as a baby's bottom like it is super smooth I like [Music] it running Maple 3 we went to 108 again it held pretty steady at 108 but I did have to kind of lean over the planer to get to that dust hose try to hold it in place still at 108 pretty pretty consistently one thing I noticed plainly in the maple is I see those long streaks in there and that's coming from those planter knives and they would need to be either changed over or sharpened you can also see some vertical lines here from those planter knives we'll see when we plant it with the bird shelix if it has the same effect or if it's [Music] better running Maple through the bird she looks he look ahead the sound level only got up to 92 contrast that with like what 108 or so on the other one it is much much quieter as far as the streaking goes it is gone this is smooth as it can be just almost a perfect finish I'm really happy with how that turned out you hit that with 120 or 220 grit sandpaper and you've got a nice quality finish on a board it's just less work is involved when you're using this bird shelix from what I can [Music] tell as far as sound level goes we're at 108 DB with the straight knife planter on Spruce when planning the pine board I did noticed that it had a little bit of tear out especially around those knots and a little bit of the rougher areas you can see it kind of frizzed up there where it tore that board out or tore the grain off and it also has those long streaks on there with the straight knives interesting enough the sound difference between the shelix head and the straight knife without anything going through it is about 10 or so DB I'm not sure if it's because this one's 5 years old or if it's those straight knives are causing more air flow or air resistance or what's going on there but it is noticeable finish quality on the pine with this bird shelix I noticed much less tear out where the straight I Tor it out it smooth that over a little bit I could probably do one more pass and get it much smoother which I will but it is much less and it has taken away a lot of the streaking that was left by the straight knives although I think I need one more pass to get it all the way gone Color Me impressed this thing performs flawlessly compared to the straight knife version understand that the bird shelix cutter head is absolutely superior to the straight knife version is it worth the ,000 upgrade well it's not necessarily a $1,000 upgrade if you do it yourself and just purchase the shelix head for yourself and install it takes a couple of hours you should be able to do it get your machine up and running and the fact that it's not just for the dw730 5 they make them for the 734 and multiple other brands and makes I'll link to the description to their main site so you can check them out see if they have one for your model they probably do you you'll be up and running doing the same thing this thing is doing the bird she helical head are made here in the USA in Kentucky and that they do carry a lifetime warranty but they don't have a warranty on this machine if you buy it from them from what I can gather voids the warranty uh for the actual machine motor Etc but the actual helical head has a lifetime warranty personally I think the plug andplay option is best for me because I can just buy it and it's ready to go I don't have to spend time trying to figure out how to put this in and get it dowed in right they have technicians that are trained to put those in exactly like they're supposed to be and I like the fact that I can just purchase it already pre-installed the absolute advantages you're getting with this bird shix helical head is absolute noise reduction looking at 10 15 DB sometimes a little more depending on what you're cutting or what you're planning but I it was noticeable now with that said even with either these machines not planning you're still looking at the high 80s or '90s I recommend hearing protection I like these 3M ear muffs they're Bluetooth so you can listen to music but they also work without any music going these are great you buy your own whatever you like but you do need some hearing protection no matter which one but there is a significant sound difference in this one quieter versus this one which is louder the cut quality is absolutely better on this machine with the shelix head versus the straight knife this one had no tear out never and everything was really smooth left minimal lines if any at all and it was just really really smooth you take 120 grit sanding disc sand that over you're good to go this one left streaks it tore out in several different species Pine Walnut and then if you did have any figured wood like Curly Maple Etc it' be even worse you see a lot of tear out on those type Woods especially with these straight knife versions the time to change the blades is also another issue for some people swapping these around just one blade took 5 minutes if I was going to have to do all three you're looking at at least 15 minutes is give or take with this one you don't really have to change those blades out uh if gets Nick not all of them you just replace one or just actually twist it around takes about 30 seconds much much faster on the shelix head dust collection is another thing this doesn't get stopped up the shelix heads don't like the straight eyes versions do like I talked about before so with all those things wrapped up in mind I think that the value is here if you PL enough now if you're not planing a whole bunch then it really probably not going to make a huge difference to you but if you're running a lot of wood in through your shop and you're planting a bunch of wood you will absolutely love this shelix helical head for the time savings in finish so you don't have to sand as much and you're not wasting wood that's tearing out and you're having to fix that later it's just a much better value for somebody that's planing a bunch of wood now the average weekend woodworker who planes once a month or once every other month I I don't recommend this upgrade now if you like having the best of the best for a garage shop low production the DeWalt dw735 is the best of the best it's one of the best machines I've ever owned adding that shelix helic oead makes it a GameChanger Next Level tool that I'm absolutely proud to have in the shop I don't think I'd tighten one of those bolts down tight enough I just found it laying on the bed it's been chopped um probably missing one off those blades and this was an absolute amazing gift from my good friend right there all red Woodworks who actually two years ago almost to the day gifted me the Wuda Joiner as well that's how we became friends we've been on vacation together now talk almost every day just an awesome dude thank you brother r Wait if you like this video you may like the Oliver planter it has the shelix silicle heads a little less expensive still an aw aome machine not quite as robust you got to check that video out right there click in the Box get to the big old virtual fist bump

Channel: 731 Woodworks

Views: 216,104

Keywords: byrd shelix, byrd tool shelix, dw735 byrd shelix upgrade, dw735x planer, shelix vs straight knife, helical cutter head, helical planer, best woodworking planer, best planer for woodworking, woodworking thickness planer, best bench top planer, byrd shelix upgrade worth it, helical planer vs straight knife

Id: 1ubiiTbwiPA

Length: 16min 4sec (964 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023