Does owning power machines (I.e. Jointer) hurt hanplanimg technique

[jonnyfontaine]

I recently purchased an 8" jointer bit I have been flattening amd squaring board for a long time. I don't want my planing skills to diminish now that I'll have the jointer so if any of you guys have any experience with keeping up hand plane skill. Any and all help appriciated, Jonny

 

[ehpoole]

The answer is: it depends entirely upon you.

Owning the jointer does not have to cost you anything provided you make at least some effort to preserve your skills. If you do any other hand planing to help preserve technique and muscle endurance then I suspect you should do just fine, but if you use the jointer for everything and do no other hand planing then you may wish to occasionally pick a board to flatten or square for yourself every now and then. That said, while lack of exercising such skills may leave you a little rusty and tired, I don't think you ever really forget such skills unless it has been many, many, years without practice.

 

[Roy G]

Jonny, you won't want to put wood shorter than about a foot on your jointer. You can use your hand planes on short pieces to keep up your skill.

Roy G

 

[jonnyfontaine]

Speaking of, what is the ahortesst piece you can safetly joint, shortest piece also if you don't mind letter me know. Thanks so much

Jonny, you won't want to put wood shorter than about a foot on your jointer. You can use your hand planes on short pieces to keep up your skill.

Roy G

 

[ehpoole]

Speaking of, what is the ahortesst piece you can safetly joint, shortest piece also if you don't mind letter me know. Thanks so much

It depends largely upon how wide the gap across the cutterhead is, and that varies a bit with the depth of cut and jointer model, but 8-12" is a good rule of thumb for most jointers. For edge jointing you can safely go a bit smaller since only the edge is being jointed and the fence becomes your bearing surface, but you still want something around 2-3 times the gap width.

However, remember that there is no need to limit yourself to only jointing or planing boards cut to finished dimensions, so you can joint and plane prior to cutting boards to final dimensions. As such, the minimum dimensions are usually not a major limitation.

 

[Willemjm]

I use jointer, planer and drum-sander, yet still often get tasks where a hand-plane is the best solution.

You can get a better planing surface, shiny with almost no grain raised during finishing, when you use a properly sharpened hand plane. Also, with all three, being the jointer, planer and drum sander, if you want a perfect surface it needs more work. Normally I would use a random orbital sander up to 220 grit in this instance. If we want to split hairs though, with a ROS finish you lose perfect flatness. Something a hand plane with the correct technique provides perfectly.