Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm a fan of DeWalt. Their products are usually very well-designed and built. So this hand planer is a big disappointment. Straight out of the box this planer cuts unevenly - much deeper cut on the right side of the tool. If I set the tool to 0 depth of cut I get a tiny skim cut on the left side of the tool, and a cut of 1.5 - 2mm on the right side of the tool. I figured it was just poorly adjusted from the factory - no big deal. Precision tools have to be adjusted and you can never trust the factory to do it right. So I followed DeWalt's procedure for aligning the blades. No change in the result. At all. So then I did what I should have done in the first place and checked whether the shoes are coplanar. They're not. Not really very surprising because like I said, you typically have to dial your precision tools in yourself. The problem is that the shoes are not adjustable at all. They CANNOT be made coplanar. The rear shoe is bolted down to the injection-molded chassis. I guess they expect the chassis to be perfect as it comes out of the molder. I'm an engineer and have worked as an engineer in manufacturing for the last 16 years and I would NEVER expect a complex injection molded part to be accurate enough for what they're aiming for with this planer. It's just completely unrealistic. So, there absolutely should be a way to adjust the shoes - but there isn't. Without engineering my own method for making the shoes coplanar, and square to the blades, this tool is useless.