Planer options??

[michael skehan]

So I have a small home with limited space and do not do enough woodworking to justify buying a nice table joiner/planer. I'm often faced with buying boards that do not have one level surface, are there any options to plane a nice flat surface? Do these hand held planers work?

[David Weaver]

You can use a hand held planer to knock down the high parts of a board and get it close, but what you need to get the surface flat and clean is a hand plane, specifically a jointer.

In the world of woodworking, face jointing and edge jointing your boards by hand is not something that takes long once you know how to do it, and guaranteed you'll waste off less thickness than you would with a power jointer.

But you don't really want to go without a power planer if you are going to build fairly large pieces without using a lot of plywood, etc. Any lunchbox planer is fine. I have never had a respectable power jointer, and most of the stuff I have built has been hand thicknessed, but when the rubber hits the road and you have time limitations, you want that power planer.

[Mike Cutler]

Handheld power planers are, as David pointed out, nice for removing high spots. They can take off a lot of material, fast! so you have to be careful. It's very easy to ruin the material.
One suggestion, if even a lunchbox planer is too big, is to use a router. A 1 1/2" bowl bit in a router can be used to flatten one face with the proper router jig, and there are many variations of it. Google "planing with router", and you'll find many links and videos.

[Jim Neeley]

Michael,

If space is job #1, be aware of the option of purchasing a single tool that converts between a jointer and a planer. It hold the footprint down to about that of the jointer alone.

Either that of go with hand planes. The handheld power planers, while quick to remove wood, would take a lot more skill than I have to approach flat and square. Come to think of it, i don't know of anyone else who can get truly flat surfaces that way either.. <g> Maybe they exist? meh..

[Doug Ladendorf]

+1 to what the others have said. A hand plane (the people powered kind) will be your best bet. You will need to consider work-holding too. Do you have a good workbench or other surface that will hold the board without sliding around while you work on it?