I'm possibly going to purchase a planer or a jointer. Which one would you recommend me buy first. I likely won't be able to afford but one of these for atleast 12 months before buying the other one. I'm thinking the planer but I could be missing something.
You're right, assuming you plan on buying at least S2S lumber. You need at least one flat face to start milling, if you don't have a jointer. There are solutions to edge jointer that you can do with the table saw or router table, but if you don't start out with a flat face before surface planing you're SOL. If you want to use completely rough lumber, you really need both a jointer and a planer, or resort to a lot of elbow grease and use handplanes.
Mike
if you can only afford one a planer and a scrub plane will do it. you can do edge jointing on the tablesaw or router or use another plane. with a scrub plane you can remove the high spots then run it through the planer and flatten both sides.
This might be a dumb question, but what is a scrub plane? How much do they cost and where can I find one i.e. Lowes, Home Depot?
You don't find quality woodworking tools at either of those places. If you want a good plane, you buy Veritas from Lee Valley, you buy a plane from Knight Toolworks, or you shop at Woodcraft or similar stores.
You do not buy Buck Brothers planes, Stanley Handyman. See one here:
I'd suggest a 1/2" hammerdrill, hot glue gun and a bunch of other crap from HF you can buy for under $500. You can search this group and find sound advice on this topic from an "expert" ;-)
a scrub plane has a really sharp curve on the blade. it is used at about 45 degrees across the grain. You can really remove a lot of wood with it fast. Plus it takes very little effort to use. you can buy them in wood or metal form or make one from a old plane. they are not precision tools so it makes life easier.
Probably not at Lowes or Home Depot. You can buy new ones from Lie-Nielsen, ECE, Steve Knight, and probably others. Stanley made a scrub plane (no 40) that is frequently on Ebay.
I think you are right that if you can only afford a planer or a jointer, you'd probably opt for the planer and a hand plane. The simple reason is that it's a lot of sweat to either do jointing or thicknessing by hand, but it's a lot less sweat to joint than it is to thickness because generally much less material is removed. I started this way, using winding sticks and a straightedge to do the face jointing by hand plane.
However, you will shortly want both a planer and a jointer. First, it's a *lot* of work to hand joint, especially if you have much bow or twist at all in your stock. Second, you can't skimp on the jointing if you want your work to look good. It's nearly impossible to make really good joints without having your stock be fairly close to true, and it takes a fair amount of skill to really joint as accurately as you might like by hand. After six months of hand jointing each board by sweat, my stock was never as true as when it was done using my $325
6" jointer.A scrub plane is far superior to a bench plane for flattening the board (it has a more rounded, narrow iron that lets you remove more material at a time with less effort). It is possible to make do using a regular bench plane, going diagonally with the grain, but again it is even more work than with a scrub plane.
Hope that helps.
Nate Perkins Ft Collins, CO
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.