The Home Improvement Thread

[CroFlames]

Question for the woodworking guys if this theory makes sense...

Since most work pieces go over the jointer followed by the thickness planer, can you get away with a bit of a cheaper jointer and use the money toward a more powerful planer with a helical cutter head to produce a smoother surface?

Basically get away with a benchtop jointer, but then buy a thickness planer that’s closer to heavy duty grade.

[opendoor]

Depends on a lot of things, like what you usually building (i.e. length of boards), what kind of material you use (totally rough wood might have different needs than skip planed wood), and how much wood you'll be milling.

One option is to not have a jointer at all. If you mostly work with shorter lengths and/or partially milled wood, and are willing to use a planer sled or hand plane when needed, you could just go with a good planer. Often with careful wood selection and allocating the straightest boards to the longer lengths, it's possible to get away without one.

On the other hand, if you're dealing with longer, rougher boards but aren't going to be milling huge volumes of wood, a good jointer paired with a cheaper benchtop planer can be a good option (benchtop planers often produce a better finish than industrial ones). But cheap benchtop planers are pretty slow, since they can't remove as much wood as bigger ones, so if you're milling a lot of wood that gets old pretty quickly. And they're brutally loud.

To more directly answer your question, I think benchtop jointers are usually kind of pointless. The beds are too short to really straighten long boards and they're usually pretty cheesy. Jointers really do need to hold their settings (the weight of bigger ones can help with this) or they become frustrating to use. That said, I don't have a ton of direct experience with smaller jointers, so I could be wrong.

If I was starting from scratch I'd try to buy used if possible and if I was buying a jointer, I don't think I'd bother with benchtop. For a planer, helical cutters are great if you use a lot of figured wood (and they're quieter), but depending on the premium they cost, you might be better off with a traditional cutterhead and putting that money elsewhere. Here's how I did things:

-no jointer, just a super cheap benchtop planer and a table saw; it worked OK for furniture other smaller stuff as long as I worked around the limitations.
-added a 8" heavy duty jointer; this made using longer/bigger stock much easier and faster, but it soon exposed slow my planer was.
-added a 15" planer w/ standard cutterhead; this sped things up considerably and made milling wood a lot less annoying. But depending on how much wood you're processing, a higher quality benchtop planer might be totally sufficient.

[81MC]

Just to add to that^

You can joint with a decent table saw using a pretty basic jig. Or you can joint with a router table. Or, if you enjoy the process, you can joint with a simple hand plane. I’d suggest trying each of these options and determining if they maybe aren’t good enough?

A floor standing jointer takes up so much space in my small garage it’s not really feasible to add one, and they aren’t exactly cheap. YouTube has a tone of great material, but for every budget or handcrafted conscientious creator, there seems to be 5 with many-thousands worth of equipment and limitless work space.

[sa226]

It depends on what you're doing of course, but I don't have a jointer. I built a jointer jig for my table saw. If you have 1 finished side you're off to the races. I would definitely put the saved money towards the planer.

I think if you're working with thick stock, like 4x or 6x then a jointer would become useful.

Sent from my SM-G973W using Tapatalk

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Depends on a lot of things, like what you usually building (i.e. length of boards), what kind of material you use (totally rough wood might have different needs than skip planed wood), and how much wood you'll be milling.

One option is to not have a jointer at all. If you mostly work with shorter lengths and/or partially milled wood, and are willing to use a planer sled or hand plane when needed, you could just go with a good planer. Often with careful wood selection and allocating the straightest boards to the longer lengths, it's possible to get away without one.

On the other hand, if you're dealing with longer, rougher boards but aren't going to be milling huge volumes of wood, a good jointer paired with a cheaper benchtop planer can be a good option (benchtop planers often produce a better finish than industrial ones). But cheap benchtop planers are pretty slow, since they can't remove as much wood as bigger ones, so if you're milling a lot of wood that gets old pretty quickly. And they're brutally loud.

To more directly answer your question, I think benchtop jointers are usually kind of pointless. The beds are too short to really straighten long boards and they're usually pretty cheesy. Jointers really do need to hold their settings (the weight of bigger ones can help with this) or they become frustrating to use. That said, I don't have a ton of direct experience with smaller jointers, so I could be wrong.

If I was starting from scratch I'd try to buy used if possible and if I was buying a jointer, I don't think I'd bother with benchtop. For a planer, helical cutters are great if you use a lot of figured wood (and they're quieter), but depending on the premium they cost, you might be better off with a traditional cutterhead and putting that money elsewhere. Here's how I did things:

-no jointer, just a super cheap benchtop planer and a table saw; it worked OK for furniture other smaller stuff as long as I worked around the limitations.
-added a 8" heavy duty jointer; this made using longer/bigger stock much easier and faster, but it soon exposed slow my planer was.
-added a 15" planer w/ standard cutterhead; this sped things up considerably and made milling wood a lot less annoying. But depending on how much wood you're processing, a higher quality benchtop planer might be totally sufficient.

Great tips and write up, thank you.

When you say you upgraded from a bench top planer to a 15”, how heavy duty did you go? In other words, may I ask what model you got?

I love woodworking but I’ve never been able to set up a decent shop until now. I’m wondering to myself if many hobbyists end up with a $1500-$3000 planer anyway, should I just skip the $600 planer and get the big baddy right off the bat.

[opendoor]

I have the Grizzly G0453, though they were quite a bit cheaper back when I got it about 10 years ago (I think I paid $850 USD). But really, most of those imported fixed head 15" planers are basically the same design. If you look at the G0453 and compare it to the equivalent Craftex, King, Jet, Shop Fox, etc., they're all basically the same, with maybe some minor quality control differences.

You can definitely go higher end than that, but I've found it to be great and there's really not a lot that can go wrong with them. Setting the knives after sharpening can be a little annoying, and that's one benefit of a helical cutterhead.

Some of the higher end benchtop planers (I think Dewalt is supposed to be best in class for that) are apparently quite good, but I don't have direct experience with that, as mine was a low-end Ryobi. So depending on how much wood you're milling, that might still be a good option. With a good quality smaller planer, I don't think you're really losing precision or cut quality, it's more just power and speed. So if you're mainly doing furniture or smaller jobs, it might be totally sufficient. But if you're milling an entire kitchen's worth of wood, it's nice to be able to bring 1" wood to 3/4" in just a few passes.

When I bought the bigger planer I was doing an entire house's worth of woodwork, so the speed increase was crucial. But I could probably live with a smaller one now if I had to. That said, sometimes it's a good idea to just buy the better quality tool earlier, rather than to upgrade later and end up spending more money overall.

[Fuzz]

Anyone use something like this?
https://www.homedepot.ca/product/kre...jig/1001184777


I've been looking to get something like it. The Dewalt rip fence looks kind of manky, and I've got 2 Dewalt saws that use different rip fences, so this seems like a better way to go. Any thoughts?

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by opendoor

I have the Grizzly G0453, though they were quite a bit cheaper back when I got it about 10 years ago (I think I paid $850 USD). But really, most of those imported fixed head 15" planers are basically the same design. If you look at the G0453 and compare it to the equivalent Craftex, King, Jet, Shop Fox, etc., they're all basically the same, with maybe some minor quality control differences.

You can definitely go higher end than that, but I've found it to be great and there's really not a lot that can go wrong with them. Setting the knives after sharpening can be a little annoying, and that's one benefit of a helical cutterhead.

Some of the higher end benchtop planers (I think Dewalt is supposed to be best in class for that) are apparently quite good, but I don't have direct experience with that, as mine was a low-end Ryobi. So depending on how much wood you're milling, that might still be a good option. With a good quality smaller planer, I don't think you're really losing precision or cut quality, it's more just power and speed. So if you're mainly doing furniture or smaller jobs, it might be totally sufficient. But if you're milling an entire kitchen's worth of wood, it's nice to be able to bring 1" wood to 3/4" in just a few passes.

When I bought the bigger planer I was doing an entire house's worth of woodwork, so the speed increase was crucial. But I could probably live with a smaller one now if I had to. That said, sometimes it's a good idea to just buy the better quality tool earlier, rather than to upgrade later and end up spending more money overall.

Thanks again for the info kind internet stranger. I will mostly be building furniture, and I want to try different hard wood species. Speed is not a factor for me since wood work is a hobby for me and it's my excuse to unplug while I'm doing it evenings and weekends. My priority is the quality of the surface the planer produces. I've been leaning toward the DeWalt benchtop, but it doesn't have a helical head so I started wondering about quality. Maybe traditional knives are good enough and a scrape or sand will take care of the rest.

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Anyone use something like this?
https://www.homedepot.ca/product/kre...jig/1001184777


I've been looking to get something like it. The Dewalt rip fence looks kind of manky, and I've got 2 Dewalt saws that use different rip fences, so this seems like a better way to go. Any thoughts?

Hey. Stop stealing focus away from my planer discussion

[surferguy]

I have the dewalt and it’s been very versatile for my needs.

[surferguy]

Double post

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Thanks again for the info kind internet stranger. I will mostly be building furniture, and I want to try different hard wood species. Speed is not a factor for me since wood work is a hobby for me and it's my excuse to unplug while I'm doing it evenings and weekends. My priority is the quality of the surface the planer produces. I've been leaning toward the DeWalt benchtop, but it doesn't have a helical head so I started wondering about quality. Maybe traditional knives are good enough and a scrape or sand will take care of the rest.

Depending on the wood you're using, straight knives will probably actually provide a better finish than a helical head. And if you're comparing benchtop to heavy duty floor standing, the benchtop will generally give you a better finish that will need less sanding or scraping. I've found planer marks to be much more noticeable on the bigger machine even when the knives are freshly sharpened.

Oh, and one other thing about 15" planers vs benchtop ones; it's much harder to sneak up on a thickness. Because the infeed rollers are generally textured, they leave an imprint on the wood. This normally gets planed away, but if you're taking off less than a given thickness (I think 1/32nd of an inch or so) the marks won't be removed. So the big planers can be a bit less versatile and/or require more sanding due to that.

As for helical vs straight, helical heads have three major advantages:

1) They can handle figured woods without tearing out. If you're going to be using a lot of wood with twisty/reversing grain then it could be a real advantage and that's one instance where helical will provide a markedly better finish than a straight knife head.

2) There is virtually no downtime due to sharpening or blade replacement. If you get a knick, you just rotate that cutter. And you would sharpen or replace traditional knives a bunch of times before you would need to replace your helical cutters, so they save time that way.

3) Related to #2, over the long term helical cutters can save a bit of money, since they last so much longer. The up front cost is obviously higher, but over time they can become cheaper.

So they're great for those reasons, but #2 + #3 are much less of a factor in a hobby shop. You might go years without having to sharpen or replace your planer blades, so the time/cost savings would probably never be realized.

And #1 is mainly an issue if you're using figured woods a lot. If you're not, the finish might actually be better without the helical head. And you can mitigate tearout with a straight knife planer by paying attention to grain direction. And if you hit a really tough spot, wetting the wood with a spray bottle can usually prevent it; not the most elegant solution, but it can help prevent ruining expensive wood.

I guess the TLDR for my opinion is, all other things being equal, I'd take a helical head over a straight knife planer. But I'm not sure how much of a premium I would pay for it if it meant compromising other main tool purchases.

[CroFlames]

Man that's great info to consider, thank you yet again. Feel free to share any and all knowledge when it comes to shop building Bandsaws, dust extraction, drill press etc haha

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Man that's great info to consider, thank you yet again. Feel free to share any and all knowledge when it comes to shop building Bandsaws, dust extraction, drill press etc haha

However big it is, make it bigger.

[woob]

Man opendoor - Super interesting and helpful posts! Can I ask how you have such an abundance of knowledge on this? It's cool if you don't want to say.

Wondering if we should have a wood working thread? I love nerding out about this stuff even though I'm not even remotely into wood working yet.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

However big it is, make it bigger.

It's an attached garage so not many options making it bigger. The cars go on the driveway

[surferguy]

Thanks for the tip about Wetting the wood for mitigate potential tear out. I didn’t know that trick.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by woob

Man opendoor - Super interesting and helpful posts! Can I ask how you have such an abundance of knowledge on this? It's cool if you don't want to say.

I did woodworking/cabinetmaking part-time through university (more in the summers) and a bit after. I was totally fortunate to have nearly free shop space at the time, so I was able to set up a decent shop pretty early on and run with very little overhead. It was fun, but I never really had any illusions about doing it full time as a career, so I just focused on building up a shop and then eventually slowly phased out of that and moved on to other stuff.

My hat's off to anyone that can make a living doing that, particularly in their own small shop making high quality stuff. You've got to be very talented, a good salesperson/businessperson, and a hard worker to pull it off.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by surferguy

Thanks for the tip about Wetting the wood for mitigate potential tear out. I didn’t know that trick.

Yeah, it saved me once when I was doing a 3.5' deep butcher block for an island. Because of how it was built (flat sawn wood sliced up and rotated 90º so it was a bunch of 1.5" wide quartersawn pieces glued together) there was naturally going to be grain going in different directions between the various pieces. I had glued it up into three 14" widths so I could fit them through my planer, but no matter which way I sent it through I was getting awful tearout. But spritzing it with water almost completely eliminated that and it worked out great.

I guess there's a reason that big shops have widebelt sanders.

[justkidding]

Does anyone here have experience with electric underfloor heating in a basement bathroom? We just had a company install a system and tiles and the temperature won’t go above 17 deg C and the floor only feels a tiny bit warm. I think they should have put some kind of barrier between the concrete slab and the membrane but they didn’t and now all the heat is going into the slab. Any thoughts? What should we do now?

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by justkidding

Does anyone here have experience with electric underfloor heating in a basement bathroom? We just had a company install a system and tiles and the temperature won’t go above 17 deg C and the floor only feels a tiny bit warm. I think they should have put some kind of barrier between the concrete slab and the membrane but they didn’t and now all the heat is going into the slab. Any thoughts? What should we do now?

Was there an in-floor temp sensor installed under the tile up to the thermostat?