A while back I decided to get a new planer and mod it myself. I ended up going with the Hitachi because it was the easist to mod myself due to the abundance of information on this planer. I just recently finished the planer and I decided to take some pics and post them because honestly, this is the best Hitachi planer I have ever seen. Its PERFECT! Looks almost like it was bought like this. Like I said, I did all the mods myself and will list them below. Take a look. I might be offering my services to build them because I know you won’t find another with the attention to detail that I have given to this planer. I included closeups and used my Pro camera to take the pics because it came out that good. I dont need crappy images to hide anything. I am NEVER this confident and don’t want to sound arrogant but I am proud of how good it looks and Planers have started to look as good to me as a beautiful car or woman does. I’m going to mod a Bosch or Makita next. The newer sliding shoe Bosch looks good and I might even attempt to try and mod a Miluakee M18. I’m a huge Milaukee fan as it is and would love to see what a cordless could be like. I’m also on the lookout for a Skil 100 thats prestine, but who isn’t. That I would never mod, just clean up real nice. Anyway, have a look and enjoy.
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Handle Relocation.
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“On The Fly” adjustment and home made knob.
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Exhaust Chute (Also Homemade and took a while to get perfect).
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Bearing Swap (Mine were new and looked good, not crappy like I have heard they sometimes can be but I added SKF’s).
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Shoe and Baseplate grinded.
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Added High Quality 25ft cord. 14 Gauge.
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Replaced some screws with Stainless Steel replacements.
Thanks to this website and the Forums for the information and tips. I also watched Brian Pavlicks videos on YouTube to get a good idea of what to use and do. His videos were crucial to me being able to attempt this!