Interested in a Wood Planer?

We get so many emails from customers asking us about wood planers. Some of them don't even know what is a wood planer and just want to know how to get their wood nice and smooth. To us, a wood planer is as necessary as a saw, so the question takes us by surprise. But so many people have been asking that we decided we had better answer.

Let's start with the obvious - a tree does not grow out of the ground in the form of a plank! After it is cut down, it has to be milled into planks of various widths, lengths and thicknesses. This is usually done in a mill with a big wide-toothed bandsaw. Then it is set aside to dry naturally or, more often than not, kiln-dried.

The wood you buy in a large lumber yard has been run through an industrial wood planer. Thousands of yards of wood per hour can be turned into perfect two by fours in this way. The biggest operations send out truckloads of pine and Douglas Fir every day to meet the demands of builders across the country.

Rough sawn hardwood is usually sold to medium scale manufacturers of furniture, small and one man wood craftspeople and wood hobbyists. There is a wood planer for everyone's needs. A manufacturer with a hundred employees will have a wood thickness planer that can make a great deal of wood ready for construction into tables, chairs, etc., while smaller operations will have one that takes up less space - maybe even a multi-purpose machine that is a saw and planer and more in one compact machine.

There is a multi purpose machine for almost any sized wood shop. Many medium scale cabinetmaking businesses have at least one that they use for specialty work and many small scale professional craftsmen have found that a good quality 3-phase machine can give them a lifetime of service and produce the fine results they need.

Most hobbyists starts off with an inexpensive hand wood planer, These are great for some purposes, but eventually even the hobbyist usually gets a wood planer that can make a smooth finish and plane wood to exact thicknesses. These can be very inexpensive and even portable. The cheaper ones won't be able to take a plank more than about 6 inches wide and may not have enough power to efficiently plane hardwoods.

It's a good idea to think about what you might be wanting to do with your wood planer into the future before you make your first purchase. The cheap one you buy on sale may disappoint you when your hobby turns into your passion and you go out and buy a highly figured length of walnut to turn into a showpiece walnut table.

What is a wood planer? It is a terrific piece of equipment that can help you get magic results out of a simple slab of wood. When you see your first rough slab of walnut come out the other side of the planer looking like a natural work of art, you'll be glad you bought one!