Tools you DON'T need: Jointer vs Planer vs Drum sander
Tools you DON'T need: Jointer vs Planer vs Drum sander
Do you need all three milling machines? Just two? One? None? This video will tell you what and why.
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Well done. A shooting board and a hand plane can make an excellent straight edge. A table router can be setup like a shaper and using good fences can work like a jointer. You can ,sort of, flatten a board, good enough, to put it through a planer with a scrub plane & winding sticks. You could cheat and use a power plane. Another alternative is a router sled. Drum sanders are slow and changing belts is really slow, not worth their cost.
Shapers are not high on hobby woodworkers list but they are extremely versatile. Might be worth doing a segment on.
Thanks for the great video.
Very educational video and you seem to have so much more to offer, yet the title? You need them and more then one, as a starter i have done smaller river tables with my router. Needing to invest (upgrade) i was hoping I could find something i DON’T need. I know you know way more than myself, I would have found your channel regardless. No need for the click bait! Keep on teaching man, but if titled right i would have seen this vid 2 years ago
hi bud,am going through what next,have a old thickness planer,but think next should be jointer as you say,am a wood turner and laminating wood,need flat for gluing,thanks for demo,clears up things in my head
Is there a machine with all three planer Joyner and drum sander
Thanks
You guys do know there is a combination planer/jointer, right? They’re very common over here in Europe.
Looks like you need more hand planes. That’s pretty obvious.
Ironic that you’re standing in from of dozens of hand planes, but don’t even mention them as a cheap alternative to all three machines. Start with a sharp hand plane on a small beginning project and gather an intuitive understanding of the reason for these automation tools.
The cheapest solution is on the wall right behind him. A hand planer. With practice you can plane boards flat by hand as good as any machine.
Amazing info, thank you !!!
I’ve always just used a router table to flatten the edges of my boards. I use a 2-1/4" surfacing bit, but I’ve heard people say they use a forstner bit with good results. It might just be a rougher finish than a surfacing bit. Either way, a router table it easily the most versatile tool in anyone’s shop. I can plane a 400mm (~16") board in no time.
Great video, thank you! You know your stuff.
Combined jointer/thicknesser are the best alternative if you ask me but that is what I have been taught on
good info, thank you
My shop teacher taught us to place a manual plane on its side when set down or stored. Off the blade. Every one of the planes on shelves behind you are resting on the blade
This is such a great explanation. Thanks!
In a recent experiment, I turned a piece of a limb from a white pine (Bark, knots and all) into something I could use. I did so solely with the table saw to square up the end grain and a miniature block plane. As I got close to finishing my work, I decided to try sanding one face with fine grit sandpaper. To my dismay, the beautiful grain became fuzzy from the grit of the sandpaper. So I ended up going back to the plane to finish the milling.
Relevance to your post? If the beautiful grain of your workpiece is important for your project, maybe a thickness sander is not the tool of choice.
You nailed the order that I used to build up my shop.
First the table saw, then the lunch box planer, then the bench top jointer.
Found a Craig’s List opportunity to upgrade my bench top jointer a few years ago that was too good to pass up. Who says no to an 8” Grizzly jointer for less than $400 right?
Took a few commissions for end grain cutting boards last year and that finally pushed me over the edge to get the drum sander.
A great video breakdown as always. Thanks for all you do!
I want to put a flat surface on a rough cut log length wise just the center side what tool should I go for projects ultimately for bandsawbox with a tree look
I was thinking that modeling clay or some kind of firm, workable putty could be used to make a planer jig on the fly, Or how about a sled with a bunch of threaded through-holes to use screws as supports…
Or what I think would be really cool would be to have a long pin art toy that could precisely follow the contour of the board along the entire bottom surface OR… ok I’m done.
Thank you for clarifying this topic. You are right. A lot of YouTubers glaze over the use of these machines and you have given me clear and concise input for my next tool. Just invested in the SawStop, so I am going to have fun with that for now. Love your videos!
All the crap one needs to buy in order to do a bit of woodwork makes me want to use metal instead of wood.
Many thanks for your excellent presentation. Very helpful and much appreciated.
I sure wish I had seen this years ago. I have developed a dozen ways to correct crooked and cupped/bowed lumber. I did notice you have a lot of grizzly tools in your wood shop. Have they been good quality tools for you? I just purchased a grizzly planer with helical heads and I love it so far. Light years ahead of my old DeWalt 735 that lasted less than a year. I’d love your opinion, thanks.
Hey, novice question here. If you’re a fan of hand tools, would a nice hand planer do the job of a belt sander, albeit less precisely? It seems like, "removing a little bit of material from thin stock or glued up end grain cutting boards" sounds like a hand planer would be perfect for the task!
What is the best methodology for “straight” power plane cut, from the latch door stile, (with a 8-degree swing chamfer) and take say 1/16” off this face from 0”at the top of the door to the 1/16” off at the bottom, in again a straight line cut?
Thank you, that was an awesome explanation for my teeny little brain.
Sir how is Belmash. Machine. It’s good ???
Thank u
👍
JOINTER NEEDED TO GLUE UP BOARDS , LIKE TABLE TOP ???? THX
Thank you for the info, very useful.
A jointer, a planer, and a drum sander all walk into a bar….
Hi! I was ripping 60 inch long poplar from a 10 inch board with a table saw into 2 inch wide pieces (2X60), and the cuts started to bow (they weren’t perfectly straight). Would a planer or a jointer help this or was it user error that this happened to the rip cuts?
This is a very good advice, but if you’re looking for a new series of topics, ways to flatten one face of a board, as well as ways to joint one edge– without a jointer– are numerous.
Flat: hand planes, router sled, planer sled, gluing on flat runners…
Joint: table saw jig (taper sled jig), hand planes, track saw, router table, table saw jig (sacrificial fence with embedded blade)…
None of these are as easy or productive as a jointer. Some are still useful even if you do have a jointer, though, and your workpiece doesn’t fit.
Superb, very helpful video.
If I pay to have a 36" x 10" w by 1.25" thick piece of white oak jointed & planed to be used as a front fence in a cross-cut table saw sled, will it likely stay true if UI put enough screws to attached it to my sled? William Ng made a big point of having a straight Fence on the sled by getting a six quarter piece of wood and having it reliably flat to glue the three pieces of 1/2" finish plywood together on. He said that was essentially the only way he would trust that he got a flat fence. I’m being asked by my wife to make a few replacement drawers for our 40 year old kitchen cabinets and we’re low on money. I already made a fence for the sled and the prices seem to have warped a week after I bought the sheet. So, I glued them with the warp going in opposite directions hoping that they would cancel the warp between them. It kind of worked but there are still areas of warp in the fence. That’s when I saw the William Ng video about building the sled. Now I’m confused and nervous about spending any more money on wood. Can I, or should I, use one Jointed, planed & flattened piece of solid oak to make the front fence?
Thank help for any help or comments from anyone in the know would be very helpful.
Signed,
Very Frustrated!!!
You just described my woodworking tool journey to a tee
I’m building a bass guitar using old 2×4 scraps as the "body blank." I completely botched the initial glue up and ended up with a blank that was bowed due to the clamping pressure from the sides. I managed to use an electric hand planer to make one surface flat to glue the wood top onto, but it took a good while and many passes at 1/64" or whatever the minimum planing of it was, and going slowly. After watching more of the video, maybe it was 3/16"? Anyway…
…now I want one of those benchtop jointers that are a few to several hundred, a similar planer, and already have access to a table saw >_>
Thanks for the information. Just started a wood working business; no planer, no jointer, no drum sander…not even a table saw! But I’ll get there…eventually! 🙂
But now I just feel like I absolutely do need all three?!? Gosh I sure was hoping that there would be a random secrete jig revealed at the end to modify a table saw and a router into something magical.
You can sometimes flatten a bowed board with planer. You plane the convex side as much as possible. Sometimes it works, I would say half the time.
Good video. I have found that the drum sander is more accurate in getting the exact thickness desired. My experience also confirms your recommendations, though not to compare my skills with yours.
Great vid! You can tell you’re not pandering but giving simple advice, while others would create a 23 minute video just to talk about how much knowledge they have. You made a simple video, thanks for that!
Bravo! Perfect articulation of a real DIY world problem!
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Your points make perfect sense. Now, off to buy a jointer!
I build musical stringed instruments. If I had to buy just one, hmmmm, definitely the thickness sander that takes glued up sheets of thin slices of tonewood down to 2mm.
This is exactly the information I needed at this early stage of woodworking. Thanks.