Thread: Thicknesser VS Hand planes - Advice Needed!

Depends a lot on the timber type and condition Dan.

Having a thicknesser allows you to get parallel planes that are flat in no time at all. Handplanes just make long hard work of it.

But you need a couple of handplanes as well. An HNT Gordon Trying plane & Smoother OR Veritas BU Jointer & Smoother will cover a lot of tasks. Add other planes as time goes on.

No real point in having a thicknesser if you do not have a planer/jointer as well. Perhaps a combination type might suit you?
As for planer and thicknesser vs hand plane. It's a bit like mowing the lawn with a lawnmower vs scissors.

Agree with the above. I don't get a lot of time in the shed and it takes me forever to make something, so if I can get it all straight and square quickly I can get on with the more interesting parts of the build.

If you go with machines you'll also need dust extraction. They also can be very noisy.

As for choices, I got by for years with a Ryobi thicky and a generic 6" jointer and that was miles better than hand planing for me.

Now I've upgraded to the Hammer A3/31 combination jointer/thicknesser. This is a beautiful machine, but not cheap at around 6 grand. I don't use it all that much but it just makes the tedious job of squaring timber into a dream. But you don't have to spend that kind of money, there are several other combos for less money.

Good luck with your choice, half the fun is doing the research.

Unless you are a luddite,I would forget about doing it by hand,it's hard enough by hand with softwoods let alone Aussie hardwoods.
As already stated by others you still need a surface planer or a combination machine.
Save up for a spiral head if you can,you will never go back to a straight-knife machine again.
Forget about benchtop machines they are just too noisy unless you live in the country.

The one good thing I took away from a Krenov seminar were a couple of hand made blackwood planes - oh, that and the advice to chalk a triangle on your projects.

I only use them when it comes to cleaning up a panel or a table top that's not entirely flat across the width after glue-up. Only plane that comes close in performance is my Ulmia finishing plane that my father sent out from Germany. But I am not tempted even remotely to use them for jointing.
Guess what I'm trying to say is: no need to spend money on hand-planes when you can make your own. It's a fun project.

But for anything 5' and over I'll use a jointer first, and a thicknesser second. The latter without the former is kind of pointless..... there are some really nice combo machines out there, too.

Dan, I guess it's not impossible, but in my opinion, it would be pretty darned difficult to do fine woodworking without at least a couple of hand planes. However, I don't think it's a simple question of 'which' if you want to do fine work. If you want to start from rough stock, it's nice to have electron-powered gear to do the hard yards, and hand planes to clean up & perfect things. You do want to get a few projects finished, don't you? Sure, you could do it all by hand, and if it's a hobby & you enjoy a bit of a workout, you can certainly prepare all your stock with hand planes. Buying your wood pre-machined to standard sizes would greatly reduce the workload, but there would still be many occasions where you want say, 16mm stuff for drawer sides or whatever, so you'd always need to do some thicknessing. A set of decent planes to do that conveniently doesn't come cheap, but would still cost you considerably less than the powered jobbies.

Much depends on how much preparation you think you'll need to do. I use a lot of home-harvested wood, so having machinery is a real boon for me. However, there are many times when I can't/won't use machinery, either for safety or convenience reasons. For example, a few days ago I needed to prepare some chair seats from short baulks of wood that would not fit through my planer, so I was very grateful for my scrub, jack, & jointing planes!

As already pointed out, a thicknesser only makes surfaces parallel, you still need some way of flattening one side before feeding your stock to the thicknesser. You could do the flattening step by hand with scrub & jack planes (it doesn't have to be a 'finished' surface, just flat), which halves the hand-work. Ideally, your jointer should be as wide as your thicknesser, so you can flatten any board that will fit through the thicky. The most convenient & economical way for us amateurs to have a matched jointer & thicknesser is to get one of the over/under types. The 250mm combos start somewhere around $1500 & the 300mm around the $2000 mark, but they go up (& up!) from there.

So you're up for spending a few $$$s, whichever way you go, but any serious hobby costs you a bit. Look at it this way: you could probably fit out a very nice workshop for the price of a fancy set of golf clubs. Both can give you a lot of pleasure, but after a day with the tools, one would hope you'd have more to show for your efforts than a score-card......

Cheers,

Cheers for the reply's, some great food for thought.

Time is precious, so definitely not keen on spending too much time getting timber dressed. So it looks like a combo machine complimented with a couple of versatile hand planes would be a good start. Is there really much difference between the straight and spiral cutters? Quite a difference in the price thats for sure.

As far as making my own, I'll have to add that to my bucket list! To be honest though I like collecting nice well made tools that will last a lifetime Thanks for the hand plane recommendations, the low angle veritas were really nice. Came across some good Lie Nielsen ones as well which were a bit cheaper, has anyone else tried them?

Thanks again

Dan

Originally Posted by IanW

So you're up for spending a few $$$s, whichever way you go, but any serious hobby costs you a bit. Look at it this way: you could probably fit out a very nice workshop for the price of a fancy set of golf clubs. Both can give you a lot of pleasure, but after a day with the tools, one would hope you'd have more to show for your efforts than a score-card......

Cheers,

Thanks IanW, your right its an expensive hobby, I've already spent thousands and not even close to being set up. This is one hobby though that I can justify with the family, after all the renovations and furniture built, we have saved thousands. Without the tools it would not have been at all possible. Now I'm encouraged to get in the shed and build things, how good is that!

I have bodged my way thru until recently with handplanes and a cheap thicknesser, but recently acquired a Jet combo purely because the time spent with planes meant that I really struggled to find time to get to build anything. That said, I still haven't switched it on, as my current project is being done from slabs that are too wide for the jointer. Planes on softwoods are fine, but hardwood makes it hard work. I recently flattened and squared a slab of Aust Red Cedar that required me to take 8mm of a 1400 x 400 slab, took me all day, and the shoulders knew about it for a couple of days afterwards.

If dollars are tight, a cheap thicky and a cradle jig will allow you to flatten and thickness, and then use handplanes to tidy up the machine marks.

To date I have put just over $4K into my shed for Dust Collector (2hp Jet), Laguna Dovetail Tablesaw, Jet JPT310 combo, H& F mortise machine, Router table and Triton TRA001, having started with the basic handtools and carpentry/building tools that I have had for years, and a comprehensive Milwaukee cordless kit. You are right that it can be an expensive hobby, but you can't take it with you.

Nobody's mentiones a drum sander and a ROS. Couldn't do without them these days!

Originally Posted by burraboy

Nobody's mentiones a drum sander and a ROS. Couldn't do without them these days!

I live very contentedly without either, burraboy. I haven't used any sort of sanding machine for at least a quarter of a century, and don't miss them at all. Way way back I bought an early ROS (not a very good one, I should admit) and found it the most useless contraption I'd ever encountered. Took twice as long and did half as good a job as a good smoothing plane! I did own a belt sander, too, bought during some extensive renovations. It did what I needed to do with it, & I gave it away after the job was finished. I only occasionally use very hard woods, building benches & outdoor furniture are about the only times & the finish is a bit less fussy on these. For finer work, what little sanding I may need to do is easily accomplished with a sanding block & some fine-grit paper.

Each to his/her own!

On the subject of what it costs to set up a shed to the levels you require/desire, it's certainly a sobering amount, once you decide to go beyond basic. I've got a pretty nice set-up, but I've been acquiring it for close enough to 50 years, picking up good stuff as I stumbled on it, & the cost was not that horrendous & well spread throughout much of that time. I did splash out on a coupe of new machines just before I retired & the income stream suddenly atrophied. So when I recently went through the exercise of tallying up what's there & the replacement cost, for insurance purposes, I got a little shock. I worried about it for days, until I decided I wouldn't have enough time left to re-acquire the nicer (old) tools I really value, so there was no point.....
Cheers,

As someone who somewhat less recently but in exactly the same position as you let me throw in my perspective.

The question of hand planes vs thicknesser is entirely what type of woodworking you want to do. There are those who simply love spending hours in the shed flattening and squaring a slab of wood and this comes with its own satisfaction but that is not me. Nor does it sound like you from your replies. So I think that really answers that question. Clearly you will need hand planes but I have a smattering of planes, stanley smoothers and jack, with a couple of block which I use to dress the odd piece of wood however my machine of choice is my trusty Dewalt 735 which I bought about four years ago and has served me well. It is an excellent machine with some very nice features but is not the cheapest machine in its class but IMHO is the best for the type of machine. I managed to get by without a jointer until recently but for me space is not a restriction. If you have the space I would recommend getting a thicknesser and using jigs, shims, hand planes etc to get by until you can afford a jointer. If space is a premium then go for a combo.

If I was restarting now I would shell out to get a CI floor thicknesser with a spiral head and bypass the dewalt. However I would have to spend a lot more to better the dewalt.

Originally Posted by UglyDan

As far as making my own, I'll have to add that to my bucket list! To be honest though I like collecting nice well made tools that will last a lifetime Thanks for the hand plane recommendations, the low angle veritas were really nice. Came across some good Lie Nielsen ones as well which were a bit cheaper, has anyone else tried them?

Thanks again

Dan

I have a Lie Nielsen low angle jack plane and love it.

Both the Lie Nielsen and the Veritas LA jacks are extremely good planes; they sell for the same price in the States, so any difference here is due to importer margins.

The adjustable mouth is great. With a moderately cambered blade and the mouth open I use it as a jack plane, almost a scrub plane. Then I change to a slightly cambered blade and close the mouth and use it as a smoother or even a jointer. Its versatile and thus makes a great first plane. My choice for a second plane would then be a block plane [not a smoother as the LA jack already does this job].

These comments apply to both the Lie Nielsen and the Lee Valley Veritas low angle (or bevel up) jack planes; toss a coin or buy on price plus an extra blade.


Fair Winds

Graeme