13” Thickness Planers: DeWalt DW735 or Ridgid R4331

In this video, I’m comparing the Ridgid R4331 13” thickness planer with my new DeWalt DW735 13” thickness planer. Check out the video!

My local Home Depot just had a massive sale on the DeWalt DW 735 planer. So I picked it up and today I'm gonna be unboxing this thing, putting it to the test, and I'm answering the question, should you pay the money for one of these or keep some money in your pocket with one of these? Oh, I'm excited about that. Wow, this thing is big. Man. It's so big. So I'm gonna be running one of these boards through the Lunchbox planer and the other one through the new DeWalt planer.

So at the end of the day, you're probably wondering, so which of these planers is actually worth my money? Especially if you're paying full retail for the the planer, you know, is it better to go with the Ridgid, with the lifetime service warranty? It folds up a little smaller, it's more portable, a little bit lighter, not to mention it tends to be a, a fair bit cheaper or is it better to go with something like the DeWalt? So let, let's talk a little bit about some of the differences that I'm seeing between these two. In my experience with the Ridgid planer, it is very difficult to not end up with any kind of snipe. You can set up the Infeed and out feed however you like, and it seems like no matter what you do, I still end up with a little bit of snipe at the end.

The only thing I've found that works is as long as I'm not doing anything too wide, making it go diagonally through the planer seems to really minimize the snipe on the Ridgid. How's the finish? Well, the, the finish is, is perfectly fine if you're planning on sanding the thing anyways, I, it's, it's a smoothish finish. I mean, it, it feels kind of like you went over it and maybe with like a 60 grit sandpaper, something like that. So it's, it's nothing to, to scoff at dust collection-wise. It leaves a lot to be desired. It does dump a lot of sawdust inside the cavity itself. As far as functionality goes, you may have noticed that while I was working on things, I was fairly consistently flipping this little lever here up and down. And what this is, this is the carriage lock and that's supposed to cut down on Snipe in and make things more accurate.

And then you can move this and then hit that. Again, the DeWalt doesn't have that for the DeWalt. All you're doing is you're turning this here and it's a self-locking carriage with these big four posts. Really stable as far as I could tell. One thing I think is worth mentioning here that I've never experienced with any of the other tools in my shop is I am building up a ton of static electricity on the DeWalt planer. I get close to the dust extraction and the hairs on my arms just start to lift and actually, touching the base of the planer actually got a jolt and there was a spark there. So it's just something to be aware of. I'm not sure if it's something in my setup or what, but like I say, I've never had this issue before, but this here is producing a ton of static electricity. now, as for the DW735, which really impressed with this, what I found is once I got the tables set up, and I do recommend getting those tables, I had no discernible snipe as long as I kept myself to, you know, a reasonable, like 1/32 of an inch kind of of pass.

I would say that this here, it feels kind of like a rough 80 grit instead of with the Ridgid, what kind of feels like a, oh, I don't know, a 60 grit. So it, it's a little bit smoother. I'm interested to try the DW735 when it comes to passing figured material through it because it does have the two speeds. And speed number one, the slower, finer finished speed is significantly slower than what I find the Ridgid. I found that the Ridgids general speed is comparable actually to setting number two, the faster setting on the DW735, which I, I found really fascinating. I was thinking it was gonna be the other way around, but this really does a very good job. I am pleased. For those of you who are like me and you're in a small shop, what do I think is best?

Well, honestly, you may want to consider the Ridgid planer. It's a good planer, and while it's a little bit taller or double the height, realistically, I gotta say it, it's easier to move around and you're gonna be have an easier time just finding a place for it, whether you're putting it away or leaving it out. DW735, what I've found, it's very wide in both directions. It is extremely heavy. Like honestly, it, it's probably, I don't, I don't know. I'd have to look at the spec. I think it's 20 or 30 pounds heavier than the Ridgid. So that really might make your decision for you. I mean, this thing is robust, it's rugged, it does a great job. one thing to keep in mind too on this Ridgid, both tables fold completely with absolutely no obstructions. On the DW735, What I found the front table, it folds great, but the back table, I actually ended up popping it off because it doesn't fold.

the, the carriage for the planer, it gets in the way. So it's not actually a folding table, fortunately it is just a spring loaded pin. You can press that down, pull the table off, and it's really easy to take on and off that way. Cost-wise, I bought this Ridgid R4331 13 inch thickness planer about a year ago when it was on sale for around $399 Canadian. So it was really inexpensive. I think right now it's retailing for 499 Canadians, so about $500. Another thing to keep in mind is replacement knives. You can get a complete set of replacement knives for this Ridgid planer for around the 50 to $60 mark in Canadian dollars. So pretty reasonable and in a year I have flipped the knives. I have not actually changed the knives out on this planer. On the other hand, we have the DeWalt DW735 planer, which is phenomenal and I got it for a great price at Home Depot.

Actually had it on sale for about $550 Canadian. And then I had to go ahead and buy these tables here for about another $90 Canadian. This retails without the tables for about $900 Canadian with the tables. I think the prices that I was seeing was a thousand dollars or something like that. It, it's an expensive planer. I do feel like until such a time as I have the space and the money to upgrade to some 1600 or $2,600 Canadian, you know, or 20 inch industrial type planer that this thing is gonna last me years and years. I don't know how the warranty's gonna bear out on this compared to the Ridgid, they've got their lifetime service agreement. This here has a, a limited, you know, three year warranty on some parts of it and a one year warranty on other parts. But I still think that this is great.

I really like that the depth gauge is everywhere on this. The Ridgid, it's just a little ball bearing in one place and I've definitely found that it misses its point periodically. Planer knives, the one thing I'm not happy about, there are lots of third party planer knives for the DeWalt, but if you want the DeWalt brand planer knives, you are looking at 90 to a hundred dollars Canadian at least where I've been able to find online to be able to replace the planer knives depending on how long those last you, it has me wondering if it's worth upgrading this thing in the future to some sort of helical head or or even just one of the cheaper spiral cutters, something like that. Because the cost might be offset by the carbide cutterhead and the fact that you can change just the one that has a nick and rotate at one and there's four sides.

So it's just something to keep in mind. I think both of these are really good planers. This is the one I'm going to be keeping and I'm just going to deal with it taking up a ton of space in here because I'm really impressed with it and I think for the price I got it. It is the better machine. I wanna know from you, which one of these would you choose? Would you go for the $900 DeWalt or for the four or $500 Ridgid or would you be like me and figure you'd never be able to spend that much money on the DeWalt? And then it comes up for almost the same price that this one is regular price. Would you buy this one or would you stick with this one for the portability and the cheaper knives? I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. In fact, if you've stuck around to the very end of this video, let me know in the comments so I can give you a big old thumbs up down there. Just say "cheesecake" in the comments and I'll be sure to respond and helps YouTube know that you're enjoying these videos and that maybe other people will too. So help me get the word out on this channel. If you're enjoying what you're seeing in this channel, make sure that you leave a, like a comment, hit subscribe and check out one of these videos.