I damaged my old electric planer when trying to change the blades. I would have read the manual, but I'd lost it. A quick trawl of the interwebz showed cheap and tacky planers (like my old one) at about £25-£30, a few around £50 and big name brands from £150 and up. I'm not one for buying professional-quality stuff, and I don't have a favoured brand that I would always buy. And let's face it, even well-known brands can produce the occasional lemon. One planer that caught my eye was the MacAllister one - MSHP900 3MM PLANER 230-240V. Like all of their tools, it has a pleasing light grey and black colour scheme - a bit like a Star Wars Storm Trooper - with sky blue highlights. It promised to be able to cut up to 3mm at a time, unlike most of the others which can only do 2mm. But I think what sold it to me, as a left-hander, was the ability to fit the dust bag on either the left- or right-hand side. It was £50 from Screwfix. It was a new product, so there were no