8" vs. 10" Jointer

[Mark Roderick]

After years of jointing boards by hand, I've decided to buy a powered jointer. Now I'm trying to decide whether to buy a 8" or a 10" model.

Of course that decision is based partly on cost and space, but mostly on whether the difference in width will be important to me. I do normal amateur woodworking, everything from big tables to small jewelry boxes. If I buy an 8" jointer and come across a 10" board every now and again, of course I can joint it by hand, or I can put together a jig and joint the whole thing on the 8" model. The question is, will that be frequent or only occasional?

To put it differently, how often am I going to be using boards that are between 8" and 10" wide?

Because that's impossible to predict, I thought it would be worth asking woodworkers who have purchased an 8" jointer: do you often regret that you didn't spend a few hundred dollars more and buy a 10" model? Conversely, if you bought a 10" model, do you sometimes wonder why you bothered, since most of your wood is 8" or less anyway?

Your help is appreciated.

[Greg Crawford]

Mark,

After letting too many nice boards slip away because they were too wide for my jointer, and ripping on the band saw just wasted a lot of nice wood, I went with a 12" a couple of months ago. The Grizzly economy model G0609 is about the price of a 10" anyway, plus, there aren't many 10" jointers around. I found that the big jointer didn't take up that much more space. The mobile base on my old jointer took up some of the footprint of the bigger one. The biggest issue now is it's definitely not mobile.

BTW, I've already done some 11" wide stock :-)

[Michael Sobik]

Buy the bigger jointer. I wished I had bought the 10" or 12" just a couple days after getting my 8" jointer home. Now that I'm springing for wide lumber when I can find it, I'm having to flatten boards by hand and then put them through the planer...just like when I didn't have a jointer.

[David Keller NC]

"Because that's impossible to predict, I thought it would be worth asking woodworkers who have purchased an 8" jointer: do you often regret that you didn't spend a few hundred dollars more and buy a 10" model?"

This depends on you more than us. In my case, I rarely use boards less than 20" wide on case sides. I don't like the look of glue-ups, it's wildly inappropriate on the 18th century pieces I build, and the extra cost for those wide boards is easily made up in not having to join and glue a bunch of smaller boards into panels.

If you can see yourself in this situation, buy the 8" jointer. It will serve you for the vast majority of drawer sides, table aprons, squared-up leg stock, etc..., and you're not likely to put a jointer into a home shop that will handle the wider stock.

If you prefer less expensive wood as a priority (i.e., less wide boards), then I'd consider a 10" or 12" jointer, because it will likely handle all of your needs (you can joint a board wider than your jointer's bed, by the way).

[Wade Lippman]

I had a 6" for about 4 years and frequently had boards too wide or too long for it.
My 8" is about a year old and has handled everything I have thrown at it.
So... from my experience I would say that 8" is pretty adequate.

HOWEVER, if you have the budget and room, what the heck; go for the 10". I would; except I can barely squeeze a 8" in my shop.

That probably doesn't help much, but is how I feel.

[keith ouellette]

There is also the question of figured woods and hard to face boards. I thought an 8" jointer would be all anyone would really need. Then the benefit of being able to face the boards at a slight angle was explained to me. I forget what the technique is called but it is very useful in flattening wood that tears easy.

To do it you need a jointer wider than the wood you have. Not to mention the wider jointers also seem to come with longer beds, longer fences, and have more weight which means less vibration.

Get the biggest you can afford. There are lots of benefits.

[Frank Drew]

Mark,

All things being equal, more capacity is always a plus.

[Cary Falk]

If you have the room and budget I would actually go for a 12". I think Grizzly has a 12" at about the same cost of a 10". The 10" is and odd duck of sorts. If you decide to get a spiral head later on it might be difficult. I just got an 8" and am happy with it. I got it more for the longer beds than the width even hough that is nice. If I need something wider I will make a sled for the planer or try the method where you make multiple passes on the jointer.

[Phil Harding]

Because that's impossible to predict, I thought it would be worth asking woodworkers who have purchased an 8" jointer: do you often regret that you didn't spend a few hundred dollars more and buy a 10" model? Conversely, if you bought a 10" model, do you sometimes wonder why you bothered, since most of your wood is 8" or less anyway?

Of course no one here can predict what your woodworking needs are or will be, but I can relate my own experience. I went from a 6" to an 8" to a 12". I wish I had started with the 12" jointer as I could have saved a lot of money. I haven't had a need for a jointer larger than 12" but I frequently had boards that were wider than 8". A 10" is only 25% larger than a 8", but the 12" is 50% larger for less than 50% more money (at least if you buy Grizzly).

-- Phil

[Peter Quinn]

I get the job done with my 8", and I can joint 10" bottom rails for passage doors with it. But if I had the option I would jump at a 10" in a heart beat. More room to skew boards, no screwing around when 10" boards pop up, and more mass is never a bad thing if long or thick stock is your thing. You know your work better than anyone, so if you process a 10" board once in a blue moon, maybe its not money well spent. If you do a lot of boards wider than 8" but less than 10", well that's an easy call. If money is not an object and you have the space, get the bigger machine and be covered in any event.

Next question, which 10" jointers are you looking at? I'm seeing Grizzly and Oliver as the only two making them

[Cary Falk]

Next question, which 10" jointers are you looking at? I'm seeing Grizzly and Oliver as the only two making them

Woodworker's Supply has a house branded Woodtek 10" for $2k. Don't know anything about it other than it is more expensive than Grizzly. Just another option good or bad.

[Rick Fisher]

If going 10", you may as well look at 12".. unless your looking at Oliver, they are similar in price.

[Neal Clayton]

every time i walk in my shop i try to figure out how to fit a 16" in there. i get by with an 8, barely.

jointers and table saws, they can never be too big.

[Brian Smith3]

I can honestly say that if you have the space and the budget, this is the one tool where bigger is better. As you can see we have moved from 8 to 12 to 16. I would look at the 12 if I had a budget for a 10. When I moved into a smaller shop the only thing I didn't sell was my 12" jointer. I will find a way to fit it back into the new smaller shop, that's for sure.

[Matt Day]

It's always nice to have the extra capacity. I only have an 8" and it gets me by, and I can joint 8"+ boards by jointing 8" of it then using a jig on the planer, but this takes a lot more time and fiddling. The more I think about it, I want to spend my limited time in the shop woodworking and not fiddling.

If you have the money and space, go for the biggest you can afford/fit.

[Rick Moyer]

I have an 8" that has been fine for me 98% of the time. Unfortunately the other 2% is a problem. 8" was stretching my budget at the time. I think you could be satisfied with an 8", but it depends on you. That being said, I would skip over a ten and look at twelve inch. The extra 4 inches will make much more of a difference than going from 8 to 10.

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Mark, I went from an 8" jointer and 14" planer to a Hammer A3-31 combination jointer/planer (12" both functions).

I use the extra width as often as possible, or when I need to skew the wood to help reduce tear out.

I've not only saved space and money over my two previous separate machines, I've increased my capacity.

If I had room for the 16" machine, I'd have bought that...Rod.

[Paul Johnstone]

I am going to give a small counter argument.

I was deciding between an 8" and a 12" jointer. Then I realized that a 12" jointer weighs about 1000 lbs. That's not going to make it down the basement steps. So that's one factor to consider.. the larger jointers are unbelievably heavy. I don't know if it is possible to put a 12" jointer on a mobile base or not -- maybe someone else can chime in.. but that may also be a factor.

Fine Woodworking had a great article about how to join boards wider than your jointer capacity. The summary was this:
1. Remove the blade guard on the jointer. You may have to remove the rabbet ledge too (I forget)
2. Join one face.. let's say you have an 8" jointer and a 12" board.. So now 8" of the face will be joined/flat
3. attach a flat piece of 3/4" plywood to the joined area of the board. I think they used double sided tape? I really don't remember. The unjoined part of the board will hang over the edge of the plywood.
4. Now run the board through the planer. The plywood is your "flat side". The top will now be made flat and parallel to the joined side. Flip the board over and finish planing.. now you will remove that extra 4" that was not joined.

So it is possible to join an occasional wider board if you really don't want to rip it. I just rip it though :) No disrespect to the people that try to use wide boards, it's really a neat effect, but I guess I'm a bit too laid back and don't strive for the ultimate perfection.

But in summary, there's some potential drawbacks to a 12" jointer, noted in the first paragraph.. not a no brainer IMO, even if you have the extra cash to go 12"

[Jeff Duncan]

The first job I ran after installing my 16" jointer required facing some boards that were 16-1/2" wide.....DOHHH!
No matter which size you get there will always be a situation were a bigger machine would come in handy.
My personal opinion would be 8" is a great general purpose size for the average work. If your already thinking about going bigger I'd skip the unusual 10" size and go right to a 12". I'd also look at used equipment though as 12" are pretty common these days on the used market.
Lastly mobile bases can be put onto just about any woodworking machines. I once moved a Buss 30" planer, which weighed well over a ton, on a mobile base. It moved easily with just one hand pushing it.
good luck,
JeffD

[Brad Bartley]

I struggled with the same question when I ordered mine about a month ago - Do I go with an 8", 10", or go for broke with a 12"?

I had it narrowed down to these three Grizzly jointers
8" G0490X - $1195.00
10" G0480 - $1795.00 ($600 more than 8") ( it's currently is reduced down from $2095.00)
12" G0609X - $2295.00 ($500 more than 10")

Which ever one I did buy, i knew it was going into a basement with no walk out access. It had to go down eight steps to a 43"x43" landing then a 90° left turn, down 5 more steps into the basement. The whole getting it into the basement along with the 500 more dollars steered me away from the 12". If I had a ground level shop, I probably would have went with the 12". (I've been successful moving a G0605X 12" TS, G0453Z 15" planer, and G0513X2 19" Bandsaw down the stairs so far - bandsaw one piece and disassembled the others)

My situation was that I didn't currently own a jointer and wanted to buy my "last jointer", so to speak. So, with this being my "last jointer" and reading a lot of posts about how bigger is better, I was worried about whether or not over the next 20 or 30 yrs that a time would come that I would regret not going bigger. That said, I didn't go with the 8".

So, while the chances are I would have been more than happy with the 8" and it would have been easier to get into the basement, I ended up going with a compromise on the 10" jointer.

Looking back and having decided against the 12" due to potential difficulties moving it into the basement. It turns out, from what I've been reading, is that since the 10" has dovetail ways, it's more difficult to remove the in/out feed tables without running into complications during reassembly. While the 12" is a parallelogram design and again, from what I've read, you seem to be able to remove the tables of a parallelogram jointer without too many complications. Whether or not this is true and can't speak to personally. Right now, my G0480 is still in my garage, still on the skid it shipped on (I'ts only been a week since it was delivered). My plan originally was going to be simply take the tables off and take everything down in pieces, but with the warnings of taking apart a dovetail way jointer, I'll slide the whole "top part" through my basement egress window, down a 2x12' and using winch - we'll see. I'm still tempted to take the damn thing apart, it can't be that difficult to get it back together.

Another thing that pushed me to go bigger and better is the fact that I think all of these tools are going to get a lot more expensive in the not too distant future. I believe this will be due to 1.) inflation, 2.) a weak US Dollar and 3.) demand coming back into the market for raw materials, especially in Asia where this equipment is made. You could very well could find yourself spending double in terms of US dollars to buy an equivalent machine within the next 5 to 10 years. Well, maybe not double, but it will be considerably more.

Anyway, that's what I did.

Good luck - at the end of the day you probably can't go too wrong either way.

[Frank Drew]

Then I realized that a 12" jointer weighs about 1000 lbs.

Some people might not think this is possible, but I had to move a 12" jointer last year and I swear that in the 25 years I owned it the cast iron had definitely gotten heavier! :eek:

I'm sure Fine WoodWorking's method works well, but countless times over the years I face jointed stock wider than my jointer by the much simpler method of flipping the board end for end after every pass until it was straight, and got excellent results (i.e. ready for the planer).

[Mark Roderick]

Those are all terrific responses, just what I was looking for.

You're right, nobody can predict what my needs will be in the future, including myself. That's why I thought it would be useful to take a "Wikipedia" approach to the question and assume that my needs will probably be like the needs of others who are similarly situated, i.e., other amateur woodworkers. And the responses seem to prove that out with real-world experiences.

Two other factors mentioned, the need to carry the jointer down basement steps and the need to make it at least quasi-mobile so it doesn't take up too much space, are definitely issues for me as well. Although Grizzly doesn't make a mobile base for the 10" or 12" models, I assume I could make a base even for a half-ton machine. I also assume I could dismantle the beast to get it down the steps, once in my lifetime.

Obviously, we're not talking about the ability to joint 20" boards here, just boards between 8" and 10" or 12". From what I'm hearing, however, people who own 8" jointers really do wish they owned something larger, and I haven't heard from anyone who owns a larger model and wishes he hadn't spent the money. Finally, I'm convinced that if I'm willing to buy a 10" jointer I might as well buy a 12".

Thanks again for the help. I'll let you know how it turns out.