Hammer A3 41D

The Hammer A3 41D is the only (thickness) planer in the Hammer A3 series. It is essentially the same as the Hammer A3 41 jointer planer, except with the jointer tables removed. Unlike all the other machines in the A3 series, no mortising table can be fitted on the A3 41D.

It is a great machine for those who prefer to have a separate jointer and planer instead of a combination machine. The jointer version of this machine is the Hammer A3 41A. The downside of having those two separate machines is that it costs about 40-50% more than having one A3 41 combination machine.

Spiral cutterhead upgrade

In its base form it comes with a 3-knife, quick-change, self-adjusting cutter block. This can be upgrade to a so-called ‘Silent-Power’ cutter block, which has spiral cutters and is — as the name suggests — much quieter. In this video you can see the difference in sound it makes.

The Silent-Power block has spiral cutters, which is actually 62 small blades lined up in a spiral form. These blades have four sharp sides, meaning you can simply unscrew them, turn them around 90 degrees and use the next sharp edge. Another benefit of this is that when you nick the blade, you don’t have to resharpen the entire blade, just turn around one small one.