DEWALT 15 Amp 13 in. Corded Planer with Bonus Stand

This is not my first planer (the first being a Sears 12″ planer-molder from 30 years ago). This comes in 2 boxes, the planer and the stand. The planer weighs about 100 pounds and will take 2 people to safely place it on the stand. The stand is a bit complicated to assemble and will take an hour or so to put together. On the planer, you only have to attach the crank wheel. There are 2 planing speeds and if planing hardwood, you will want to use the slower speed. Each rotation of the wheel adjusts the planing depth by a 16th of an inch. It works well, accurately and there is no snipe. Here are the issues:1) You need a shop-vac attached to the blower fan or the wood chips will be discharged at high velocity from the back of the planer’s discharge port all over the place. The shop-vac’s hose tends to drape over the out-feed table, so it can get in the way or be dislodged from the discharge port. Be aware that your vacuum container can fill up with wood shavings rather quickly and you won’t know it. What’s the decibel level of your shop-vac? See next problem.2) The noise level of this planer is atrocious, on the level of a jet engine, at least 120 dB. Add to that the noise from the shop-vac and you have hearing-damaging sound levels in the 150 dB range. I needed to use both ear plugs and muffs to make this tolerable. The noise does not increase much while planing. If you do not use hearing protection, plan on getting permanent hearing damage and requiring those $5000 hearing aids! Fort your hearing safety, do not turn this on without using hearing protection.3) The electrical cord is fairly short and comes out of the left side, back of the planer. This can effect placement within your shop without using an extension cord. This machine uses nearly all of its 15 amps, so if you need an extension cord, you will want to obtain a hefty one.