Australian Wood Review – June 2019

This is a powered block plane and certainly packs a punch.

It will plane up to 2mm in a pass with its 56mm wide blade

and has a rebating function. It’s well balanced to use and

worked like I would expect any electric plane to work. Power

is plentiful and at full depth you can push it hard through the

wood. However, its not designed for that sort of work.

I liked it for cleaning up faces of strips and applying a clean

chamfer on an edge. You can walk up to a board and check the

grain, fit a door to an opening or clean up some small boards.

It uses one reversible carbide cutter and has a tiny drawer in

the base to store a spare included cutter. The switch has a

thumb lever that has to be depressed before the trigger will

work. This is for safety but it’s a bit fiddly in use, however

I get the rationale. This is a great littler plane for site work.

For this tool and the Mini Plane above you will need a

charger at around $100 and ideally two batteries at around

$120 for a 4 amp version.

Review tools from Bosch Australia

14 Australian Wood Review

TOOLS & EQUIPMENT

This is a new design for what were once called laminate

trimmers. It features a brushless motor, standard 1/4" collet

and is quite lightweight. Its off-set design offers a different

way to use a tool like this. In use the front of the rectangular

base can be placed on the wood first offering good support.

Then the cutter can be brought into action. On a 32mm wide

piece of wood it can be tricky to balance a standard barrel

type trimmer and run a bevel along both edges. However the

rectangular off-set base on the Bosch made the job quite easy.

Compared to a corded tooI it has a slower cutter speed of

13,000 rpm without the same power, but of course that's

not the point. Don't

underestimate it as

I hogged off a very large

bevel quickly without

any slowing down or

straining sounds from

the motor.

Changing cutters is easy

with the clever spindle

lock, and depth adjustment

is quick on the sliding

thread that can be also be

finely dialed in. There is

not a lot of travel in height,

I could not use some

longer spiral cutters, but

all shorter cutters were

fine to use.

Visibility of the cutting area can be poor due to the low

position of the body and small opening and this applies to

large cutters like rounding over bits. Straight cutters can be

viewed well so you can creep up on a cut.

Run time depends on use and battery size. The smaller

2 amp batteries are very light and cheap but be real and get a

4 or 6 amp amp battery which is heavier but offers a massive

difference in run-time.

Pricing is a high compared to corded tools. There is an optional

dust shroud for extractor connection but then it will lose its

cordless freedom.

It is not as heavily built as some corded trimmers and won’t

like being banged around on-site. The collet was a bit tight and

hence fiddly to remove cutters, and as mentioned the visibility

with larger cutters is limited. However, I loved it.

Bosch Cordless Trim Router – GKF 12V-

Reviewed by Raf Nathan

Bosch Cordless Mini Plane –

GHO 12V-

Reviewed by Raf Nathan

S$K^300

IN ONLY

S$K^300

IN ONLY