[Music] [Applause] now look any power tool that makes a loud noise spits out copious amounts of sawdust and has a razor sharp cutting blade that spins at a terrifying 10 to 16 000 revs per minute can be a little scary for the novice or beginner woodworker or handyman and rightfully so because if not used correctly they can be very dangerous and inflict a nasty injury which is the last thing that we want g'day folks uncle knackers here and in today's confidence building beginners tutorial we'll be looking at one of the handiest tools in the shop the electric planer now before we plow ahead and start using the planer i think a quick anatomy lesson might be an order now basically the planer is a very simple tool all we have if we turn it over is the cutting head down here there's the blades and this spins around very rapidly so make sure you keep your fingers away from that and for the record i'm not plugged in now this section here is called the front shoe which is adjustable and this is the rear shoe which is fixed and this little thing here is called a foot and that prevents the blades from coming in contact with the surface after you've finished your cut as you can see here and that just protects your blades and also the surface from any unnecessary damage now the knob that you see on top of your planer is used to adjust the depth of your cut if you turn it clockwise like that your cut will be deeper if you turn it anti-clockwise that will reduce the depth of your cut now most planers have this little black knob on the front here and that's used to secure in place an edge fence which is this thing here so the edge fence just goes into that hole or slot on the side and then you just simply tighten up the little black knob to secure in place now the edge fence that's used for doing step cuts like rabbits rebates ship lapping and stuff like that now you'll also see that on a lot of edge fences they'll come with extra holes now the reason for them is so you can secure a longer piece of wood to that for a more controlled cut now if we just quickly turn the machine over you'll notice that on that front shoe there's a v shape cut into the base now that's for doing a chamfering type cut and i'll show you how to do that a bit later on in the video and finally on the handle we have the switch that turns the machine on or off now you also notice this little black button here which is a safety switch and that pushes in and out now if that button isn't pushed in the trigger won't operate push the button in and suddenly you're good to go now as with using any power tools safety is very important so do yourself a favor and wear some hearing and some eye protection good stuff now before you start planing if you have any loose clothing like my floppy old shirt make sure it's all tucked in even if it shows off your big fat gut don't be too self-conscious it's just that power tools and loose clothing are not a good idea next up get yourself nice and balanced stand in front of the piece that you're working on with your feet apart not all the way back here that's bad stand in front so that you feel comfortable and relaxed throughout the entire pass now the first thing we need to do is to secure the piece that we're about to plane either by placing it into a vise like i have here or by clamping it down by some other method and i've got a couple of really cool tips on how to do that which i'll demonstrate a bit later on in the video so make sure you stay tuned for that now the reason for clamping this piece down is that you don't want that to move during the planing process now with all those preliminaries sorted it's time to start planing and all you need to do is to place that front shoe flat on the piece that you're wanting to plane making sure that the cutting head with all those blades doesn't come in contact with the work and also letting you know that i'm not plugged in as this is just going to be an initial unpowered demonstration run so with the front shoe sitting nice and flat and having those blades clear of the work start the planer up wait until it reaches full speed and then ease the plane into contact with the work and push it steadily forward now one good thing to remember is that as the planer enters the work piece it's a great idea to have more pressure on the front handle than the back handle and the reason for that is that as the planer hits the work piece if you have more pressure on that back handle there's nothing under here to support it so what happens is the planer comes up and it tends to tilt and it does this and that creates a big gouge there which is never very nice now with that base plate almost fully supported it's okay to go ahead and apply even pressure to both handles now just ease your way along the piece until you get close to the end and then you apply more pressure to the back handle than the front handle and the reason for that is that if you're applying too much pressure to the front handle as the planer goes over the end it tilts down causing a gouge also known as a snipe so what you really need to do is as you're approaching the end it's almost like a plane taking off get close and then just slightly lift [Music] too easy beautiful now just very quickly as you probably already know a planer is generally used by a carpenter and since we're talking about carpenters world's worst segway what did the duck say to the carpenter quack because well it's a duck that's what ducks do don't speak english as far as i know so yeah gotta work on those jokes they're getting worse now one of the big secrets when it comes to a successful planning job is to do it in small increments say for instance we want to cut from the top of this piece of wood down to that black line do that in five or six passes rather than one big hit and you'll finish up with a more controlled and precise finish now earlier on in the video we talked about this front shoe and how it had that v shape cut into it that's for doing a chamfering type cut now if you give me a couple of seconds i'll show you how to use it now the purpose for the chamfer also known as an arris cut is to put an angle on the piece of wood that you're working on like a fence post or veranda post and all you need to do is to place that v on the base plate onto the edge of the piece of wood that locks the planer in place and then just simply tilt the planer to your desired angle and then away you go [Music] and as you can see here we've achieved a couple of different profiles just by altering the tilt or the angle of the planer now like i said earlier it's really important when you're playing down a piece of wood to have it nice and secure by placing it in a vise like i have here but what if you don't have a vice well i've got three really cool tips that you might want to try make yourself a jig like i have here out of an old piece of wood which you just simply clamp down to the workbench now if you want to make one of 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