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I've been researching the Rigid R4430 - head planer. Is it as good as they say, there seems to be quite a bit of talk about it. It seems like it's aimed at Home Depot-are they only carrier of it? Do you think it's better than the DeWalt DW734? - Dave
Dave,
 Happy New Year and thanks for the inquiry!
The Rigid R4430 is a nice portable planer with some nice features. I have used/demonstrated several portable planers, including the Ridgid. During the demonstration process I discovered, along with my customers, the Delta 13”, 2-Speed planer (22-580)
produced the smoothest finish of all of them-even smoother than it’s DeWalt 13”, 3-knife (DW735)
counterpart. By the way, the DeWalt DW734 is a 12½" planer and the DeWalt DW735 is slightly larger at 13", so the DW735 a better model to compare to the Ridgid R4430.
 Having stated that, I also had a few customers who thought the 3-knife was slightly smoother. It would just seem to make sense the more knives in the planer, the smoother the cut. As my tests/demonstrations proved to me and my customers, this is not necessarily the case.
In the portable planer category the Rigid R4430 is a great value as are the Delta, DeWalt, Makita and Steel City planers and I would consider the DeWalt DW734 very comparable to the Rigid R4430.
Home Depot is the only distributor of Ridgid brand power tools, so the Rigid R4430 planer is exclusively sold at The Home Depot and nowhere else. However, Ridgid brand plumbing tools are sold at many stores that sell tools.
The one thing you might also want to consider is the serviceability of whatever you choose to purchase. After all, if your planer should require service, it would be nice to get it. In my opinion the Delta, DeWalt, Makita and Steel City portable planers offer a larger and more accessible service network.
Finally and if possible, I would recommend you take a small piece of wood to the Home Depot or any other tool distributor and put the planer(s) to the test. I find these tests very enlightening and you can really let the results speak for themselves.
By the way, I personally own the Delta 22-580 planer and it has run
flawlessly for a long time. It's one of my favorite planers and I always recommend it
to customers looking for a great 13" planer.
Good Luck and if you have any questions about planers (or any other tools for that matter), please feel free to give me a call directly at 1-800-696-TOOL, X202.
Happy Planning!
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My company is an authorized Ridgid distributor, but we cannot sell the drills, etc, even if we wanted to. Ridgid licenses the right to other manufacturers for their name. You cannot buy any parts from Ridgid. They make you run all over the place, and the parts are almost impossible to get, and they're expensive.
Makita, DeWalt and Milwaukee are the top three tools, and they all hold parts for tools for many, many years.
So, the Ridgid may be cheap and nice in the short-run, but in the long run, they are just going to scrapped.