Ridgid Thickness Planer – The middle man!

The Ridgid R4330 is in the middle with almost the same power as the larger planers and yet more compact like the smaller ones!

The Ridgid R4330 is a portable thickness planer that is great for doing general woodworking in a home shop or on a job site, though it is a little strange to think of a 73 pound machine as portable.  It is very easy to set up, so you can be up and running out of the box in no time.

The feed table is approximately 34” with the feed bed extension tables in place.  It can handle a 13 inch by 6 inch chunk of wood and can take the thickness of a board down to about 1/8 of an inch.  Also, the side mounted adjustment hand crank shows how much material you will take off with each pass is a nice feature.  Being that the crank is side mounted, it seems to have less interference when passing boards over it.

The r 4330 has a preset depth stop that ranges from 1/8 of an inch to 1 3/4 inches.  The presets, although helpful, tend to be a little spongy- so close observation it critical here.

The Ridgid thickness planner has a three blade cutter head that has a cut per inch rate of approximately 96- that relates to about 26 board feet per minute.  One feature that it lacks is that it does not have a dual speed feed rate like some of its competitors.

Snipe can be an issue, as it can be with any thickness planer, but usually some minor adjustments and extra support on the in-feed and out-feed ends can help to minimize the snipe on long boards.  The Ridgid planer can have a little bit of vibration to is, so bolting it down to a rolling cabinet or other such benchtop can help clean up some of the chatter.

The three blades that come with the tool are dual-edged, again similar to many other machines.  However, they are spring-loaded in the cylinder head and are pretty much self-aligning and promise to provide a consistent thickness of cut across the entire workpiece.  You are able to adjust the blades side to side to compensate for any small ticks that may occur.

I have to say that the dust collection on the Ridgid R4330 planer is perhaps not as powerful as some of the other portable thickness planers out there.  Additional to the power issues, when the dust collection is hooded up to a vacuum, the out-feed table can not be folded up.  Thus it limits its maneuverability and space saving qualities. That being said, this thickness planer has a door on the dust hood that can be used to access and remove any obstructions.  This is a nice feature.

Amazon.com has some great deals so go take a look at thickness planers now!