What he didn’t tell you is with out a shaping room setup as described and shown above by bud(nice set up), you need a patient older brother to stand there on an 8’ ladder holding all the hoses and cords up above all the fray. Or standing on the side with a shop vac vacuuming all the mess as it comes off as well as vacuuming the dust off the planer and shaper so he can see what he is doing and not getting all covered in foam dust or eps bubbles.
all in all a pretty comical sight for the entire neighborhood as you try and hide behind the garbage bins as you make your mess and noise. Why hasn’t anyone invented a decent power tool sound muffler cause aside from the mess the noise from a power tool is really something else.
Or like he is right now bent over in the crawl space under your house scraping away with a sureform and sanding block.
If you plan on making boards as an ongoing hobby sort of thing, and you have the money to throw at it, I’d get a clark hitachi. I’m not trying to dis the hand tool only crew, but planers are so the best tool in my book. It does help I suppose if you have the feel for power tools, I’ve used them for donkeys years so I don’t know what it’s like coming to it with no experience. I reckon though a lot of it is just not being afraid of them and going easy to start with. That’s what the guy who first let me loose with a Skil saw told me when I started out in construction. Everyone has to use a power tool for the first time it’s no big deal really, so learn to use a planer from the beginning, apart from being shit loads quicker, planers are much more accurate, I shape as much of the board as I can with power and then smooth it all together with surform and sanding blocks, both of which you need to learn to use properly.
So get a planer a cheap one will do but a clark is better unless you can stump up for a Skil ( bit excessive really) , that’s my tuppence worth.
I can’t add a lot with regards to your choice of tools, but I really think basing ‘ecconomic’ in terms of unit price is an idea that we have to change. I don’t mean to bust your chops over it, but sending broken planers to land fill because they cost fewer dollars isn’t good sense overall. I certainly still struggle with this idea too.
In the case of power planers, no one has suggested that the cheapies don’t go the distance, so they may not be so bad… Bueller?
Wishing you the best of luck with the new venture.