Thickness planer
Once you have the basics in place in your wood shop and you
are looking for the frills, the tools that would be nice to
own, but are not necessary, you may want to take a look at a
thickness planer. Most people leave a thickness planer to
one of the last tools they purchase, because unlike many of
the other tools in the shop, a planer really only has one
major function. And if you are going to spend money on
quality tools, people will typically choose versatile tools
first.
However, a thickness planer is a very welcome addition to
most wood shops because once you have a thickness planer you
can use this fancy little tool to take rough, old wood and
plane it down into beautiful pieces of lumber that are
useable to create beautiful projects.
The purpose of a planer is just what the name implies; it
takes a rough piece of material and will plane it down into
the exact thickness that you require for your project
leaving you with a smooth, milled board. This is an
important tool for a number of reasons. The first reason is
that even if you purchase all of your boards milled from the
lumber shop, there are always discrepancies in the exact
sizes. This is not a big deal unless you are working on
furniture that needs to have precise sizes, which is pretty
much all furniture projects. A thickness planer will take
the wood you have purchased from the lumber yard and plane
it down into perfectly uniform boards so that you do not
have to worry about their being any size discrepancies in
your project.
The other reason that many people purchase a planer is
because it is far cheaper to purchase rough stock from the
lumber yard than already milled wood. If you purchase rough
stock, you can run it through the thickness planer and
create perfect boards to use in your projects. Also, if you
need a non-standard size for a project that you are working
on, a thickness planer can easily create that size for you
and save you the search through the lumber yard.
If you are looking for a planer for your home shop, a 12”
model will suit the needs of most home shops quite well.
Thickness planers are fairly transportable now, and they do
not cost as much as they once did, making them an affordable
choice for many home wood shops now.
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