What's the difference between, a jointer, planer and thickness planer

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12345678910

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woodworkers

I want to make some wooden boxes for knives, machine tools and such

I have some free hardwood, but it comes too thick,

I can try to re-saw, but the bandsaw is a low $ saw and it's not too straight.

I need to finish that out better


What's the difference between, a jointer, planer and thickness planer

Can I just use one like a thickness planer to go from rough sawn to finished thickness

If I were the Highlander, and there could only be one; which one ?


(My table saw is NFG) No $ or space to get a good one either.


I did get a local sawmill to do some thickness planing, but they didn't understand my use of a dial caliper to measure wood and they charged me pretty hard for what they did do
 
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A jointer is more for straightening the edges of boards that you are going to "join" together. It's essentially a router table with a planer attached to it.

A planer can be manual, hand held power, table top or a floor mount. I would say a thickness planer is referring to a table top or floor mount planer. With these models you can set the thickness you want your wood to be. With that being said I wouldn't take more than a 1/16"-1/'' per pass depending on the model.

For your uses I would recommend a table top planer and maybe a jointer. If you have a table saw you could use it instead of the jointer. Depending on how long the boards are you could use your flat platen to straighten the edges. One other option is a drum sander. There is also a drum sander which is like a big planer except it uses a drum sander instead of planer blades. This will give you the best finish but is probably the most expensive. Hope this helps.
 
Short answer - planer will be what you want if you just want one.

When you run boards through a planer the rollers in the planer will push the wood flat while going through the machine and sometimes the wood will not be flat when you finish, it may have a twist or bow ( for short pieces like would take for knife boxes I dont think this would be much of a problem). If you run one side of the wood across the jointer first it will make that side perfectly flat and then you put the flat side of the wood against the planer table and run it through the planer and you will have flat stock every time. A drum sander would be a poor choice because they are made for finish work and would take forever to thickness stock. If you wanted to do it by sanding a wide belt sander would be a better option.

I have a 20" planer thats sitting in the middle of my shop now that I havnt used in a while and the motor keeps whispering to me it would rather be a hydraulic press :D
 
Many mill shops, some lumber yards, a lot of hobby woodworkers, and sawyers will run your wood through their big band saws and re-saw it for a very low fee. If it isn't thick enough to re-saw, they can thickness plane it. Unless you are getting hundreds of meters thinned down, this is cheaper than buying a home unit.

My definitions are:
Jointer - small counter top or small floor stand planer designed to mainly make flat edges. Good for small planing, too. Most have a 3-6" max width.

Planer - a larger unit that flattens and surfaces lumber. Usually a floor stand tool, but small ones are counter top. The smaller counter top units are often called jointer/planers. Most are between 6" and 12" max width, with commercial units up to 36".

Thickness planer. A counter top or stand mounted unit that has an auto-feed system to feed the lumber into the planer. The rollers are set to take off a pre-set amount of wood per cut. The thickness of the finished wood is set on a scale and the wood is reduced to that thickness. These are good to put finished surfaces on sawmill surfaced wood. Most are about 12" max. After surfacing the wood, it is run through the jointer to make the sides smooth and flat.

I have a 13" width thickness planer that probably has had less than 100 feet of wood run through it. I wouldn't recommend you getting one unless you want to go into serious woodworking. If you don't have a good table saw - that is where your money should go.
 
A jointer makes faces and edges straight, true and flat.

A planer or a thickness planer, pretty much the same thing, makes thick material thinner.

If you run your lumber through a planer without jointing one face of the lumber first it'll come out of the planer thinner but it won't be straight, flat or true. It'll just be thinner.

You need both. A jointer to first make your lumber straight, flat and true and then you need a planer to make your lumber the right thickness.

Unless you really just want to buy tools I'd say find a local wood worker and get him to joint and plane your lumber to thickness.
 
You could also try your hand at hand planing an then getting a planer....If you have patience and a few inches extra for screw ups :D
 
12345678910 said:
woodworkers
I have some free hardwood, but it comes too thick,


If I were the Highlander, and there could only be one; which one ?
Click to expand...

The others have defined the differences well.

I think the answer to the other question depends on how much too thick?
 
If you don't have $ or space for a good bandsaw, you won't be able to add a table saw most likely. I'd recommend a good hand plane. Learn to sharpen and adjust it and how to create square edges and parallel faces and you'll be more talented than most woodworkers these days. Small boxes and the like are perfect places to learn these skills because you're not worrying about huge pieces of wood.

Here's a great tutorial on using a hand plane. He's doing it because the board is too big for his power tools, but the methods are the same regardless of your material. [video]https://youtu.be/Z4ch9px_ZHk[/video]
 
Find a cabinet maker locally. They can get the wood to the size you need
 
I straight saw on my tablesaw, resaw on a 24" bandsaw, run it over a 12" jointer, through a 20" planer, then through a 24" drum sander.
Works like a charm for a stiff price. Unless you are serious about a healthy wood shop investment
you would be better of picking up some S4S wood from a local supplier (sanded 4 sides).
Check locally to see whether there is a shop you can rent time in, or possibly a community college shop you can use.
 
I got your jointer, planer and thickness planer right here







actually THIS (the smaller of the two planes above) is all you really need with a few different blades and some practice but the big'un (which is called a "jointer plane") looks good in the photos. Really looks like you could do something with it doesn't it ? I don't use it much. The small dude is monster.


Oh and you will need some winding sticks. You can make those. I like ebony and rock maple.



The bandsaw is way more important than the other power tools. You can resaw by hand but . . .
well here is a hand saw for resawing



You don’t need the bandsaw until you get into planks more than about three or four feet long then you wind up needing to dig a pit and get a helper for the other end of the saw other wise it is just too tedious to follow the lines.



The sides for this chest I resawed by hand no problem and then totally hand thicknessed and planed.


This is what hand planes are capable of (see bellow) but I do admit that it is ALOT of work when you get to this scale.

My advice is to have lots of chocolate cake on hand and consume freely . . . to power the hand saws and hand planes you understand.



The hand planes cut perfect joints for this glue up. Better than power tools could have. I’m not bragging. Not my talent. I just did what the book said to do and it came out great.





Then flattened it and finish planed it. Didn’t even use any sand paper AT ALL for anything you see here.
So REALLY . . . unless you are making just scads of duplicate furniture . . . all day long . . . for a living . . . electric planers and jointers are . . .
just a bunch of noise.



 
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PS:
something you might find interesting. This rough plank is camphor wood. I resawed it and used it for drawer sides. See the little sample drawer. The drawer fronts and cabinet are walnut.

The advantage of camphor wood is it helps prevent rust when used to store tools (knives and such). It emits an atmosphere inside the cabinet when the weather changes. If you wet your finger and wipe it across the wood it will smell like the stuff your mom put on your chest when you were a kid and had a bad cold.

Kind of cool stuff. And it looks nice and is easy to work.

 
PPS:
For example . . . how would one put that table top through even a midsize thickness planer ?
Probably wouldn't fit through an industrial thickness sander.

enter . . . the hand plane

Da, dah, dah, dummmmm !
 
Working with well-tuned, good quality hand planes is very satisfying. A shooting board can help get the edges of the board 90 degrees to the face. But dimensioning a board with a hand plane is a skill that takes a fine touch and may take some time to master. Keep the plane blades sharp. For making the occasional small box to store knives etc., it may be easier to buy S4S wood from stores on the Internet that specialize in thin wood. You can final sand to high grit by hand using a surface plate.
 
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