Power Jointers: Surface Prep Made Easy
Centuries ago, our woodworking forebears spent a great deal of time with hand planes such as the #8 jointer (below) in order to take the twist, cup, bow and crook out of their lumber. Hand planes ensured that boards could be made flat, straight, square and smooth, and doing that work by hand was the only real option they had. Those capabilities haven’t changed, of course, and these days you can still prepare lumber this way. A good deal of practice with a collection of hand planes will yield excellent results. But, if you want to produce flat faces, edges and square reference surfaces in a fraction of the time, a power jointer will get the job done with minimal skill and effort. For most of us, it’s the more practical approach for processing rough lumber. And I’ll bet that if our predecessors had had the option to use a jointer, many of them would have been happy to trade their hand planes for a powered alternative. Here’s a quick study on this most beneficial machine.
What It Can and Can’t Do
A jointer is designed to flatten and square; those are its primary tasks. Preparing rough stock typically involves jointing a reference face first, then flattening an adjacent edge. A jointer is not an accurate thicknessing machine — that’s a planer’s
