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Tadej Asks:

What’s the difference between a planer and a jointer, and when should I use each?

2 responses

  1. You have to be careful with terminology here. A planer in the UK is a jointer in the USA so they are effectively the same thing. There is another machine called a thicknesser in the UK but is called a planer in the USA. For the UK, the planer is a surface planing machine and it is used to prepare a piece of wood with a straight and flat surface and an edge that is that is straight and flat and is also at 90º to the freshly planed surface. The thicknesser is a through planing machine that will reduce your piece of wood to the thickness you want it to be and also make the piece of wood the width you want it to be. Using both machines will result in your piece of wood being flat, straight and perfectly square all round.

  2. Do you recall how when you bought rough lumber and the first process was to plane one face and one edge so they are true ,flat and square and out of wind. In machine woodworking that is one of the many tasks that a planer can do, So a planer is a machine which flattens and trues up and squares timber.

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