Joiner vs. Planer

they actually do. The joiner will smooth and dimension wood boards up to a 6"or 8". (there are probably wier ones but these become more like planing machines).
A Hand Planer is kind of a joiner held in the hand and so its dimensioning capabilities are not as exact as the joiner.
Ive had friends cut parts of fingers off with joiners by not being careful with the infeed .
Joiners have all kinds of tools to push the wood against the blade (which, in a joiner is usually open and faces you).
The joiner i fixed and the board moves across it, a hand planer is mobile while the board remains fixed.

I use both and have a 24" wide machine planer moulding maker. Its a 10hp brute and chews the hell out of a wide board.
I made some shelves for my bottles of acrylic paints and have taken pieces of 1" scrap cherry stock and planed it down to 1/2" thick X 10" wide boards using the machine planer.

PS we have several others here who do woodworking . If you follow my name and get to my profile, you will see a list of topics Ive either got into or started and wood working or wood workers etc is listed. If you click on that maybe some threads will come up.

Im a mid-life woodworker and got into it hard a few yers ago. I make things for the family and whenever we visit folks they always have my stuff not hidden away so it feels pretty good to se people either appreciate the stuff or just not want to hurt my feelings.

I recall my first thread here about woodworking was about "hand cut dovetails". SOmeone led me to a site where they had several really good youtube sessions on just that topic. That was when youtube wasnt a mess of ads that you spend most of your time clicking out of.

I'm glad you've got a sensible answer, now mine won't sound mean.

The main difference is there's no Planer's Arms with **** kicking live music.



Like John Otway.

Hmm. Well, this was partially satisfying - or at least the part about how in comparison to farmerman's friends, I've still got all my fingers (and all the related parts . . .).

I'm still not sure I'm too much better off from this explanation, because except for some aspect of dimensioning, these two pieces of equipment both sound to fulfill roughly the same function, although the planer operates on a horizontal "plane" and the joiner operates on a vertical "plane". The use of the term "joiner" must infer some aspect of functionality when it comes to "joining" pieces of wood, but the specifics on that bit of speculation still eludes me. I'll throw this open and invite further explanations from the "crowd".

And while not without some limited "entertainment value", I'm not sure how much this topic benefited from the contribution from izzythepush.

Im not sure what you man re "vertical v Horizontal"

The big difference is that a motorized joiner's main duty iis, by planing an edge off a board, it "squares up the face and the edge. It doesnt do really wide boards whereas a mechanical planer does.

Yes, on reflection - now I see (realize) what you mean.

When I've seen joiners used, they're used to square the edge (vs. the surface) of the wood stock. Conversely, a planer is used to smooth/even the much wider, surface of a board. I can see (visualize) now how these two pieces of equipment couldn't be used interchangeably to perform these two different functions.

And the specific nature/function of the equipment answers the question about "vertical" vs. "horizontal" - which really is in reference to the relative mounting/orientation of the cutting blade (Planer = Horizontally | Planer = Vertical).

It still seems like there would be other, easier methods for squaring a board edge, without the need to invest in a joiner - like a tablesaw? Maybe there's some drawbacks to this . . . but if so, those aren't readily apparent to me (in my still novice wood working capacity.

If I wanted to square a board edge, I would use a table mounted router with a fence.. It's sort of a woodworker's version of a vertical milling machine.

I go to yard sals and have amassed a neat bunch of hand planes, some of them really expensive ones that I usually get for to 5 bucks.(People have no idea about some stuff's worth)
A hand plane will square an ege like anything. Using a joiner plane is where the trade name "Joinery" came from to describe a cabinet maker

Sure, but a hand plane requires more skill to get that right angle.

just like hand cut dovetails. theyre still the best looking when right

I definitely agree.