Wood Jointers

A wood jointer (also called a surface planer or buzzer) creates a perfectly flat face and a square edge on rough-sawn timber. Before timber can be run through a thicknesser, it needs one flat reference face, and the jointer produces that face. It is an essential machine for anyone milling their own timber from rough-sawn stock into furniture-ready components.

A 200mm (8 inch) jointer is a practical starting point for furniture making, it handles most solid timber components and boards up to 200mm wide comfortably. If you work with wider stock or need higher throughput, the SCM Minimax F41ES at 410mm gives you significantly more capacity. For most home workshop and small professional setups, a 200mm machine paired with a thicknesser covers the milling workflow well.

Snipe, where the machine takes a slightly deeper cut at the start or end of the board, is usually caused by the outfeed table being set fractionally lower than the highest point of the cutter's arc. Set the outfeed table so it is exactly level with the cutter head at its highest point of rotation. Also support long boards as they enter and leave the machine so they do not tip at the ends, which causes the same problem.

A jointer creates a flat reference face and a square edge on rough timber, it is the first step in the milling process. A thicknesser then planes the opposite face parallel to the jointed face, bringing the board to a consistent thickness. The two machines work together as a pair: a thicknesser cannot function correctly without a flat reference face, which is why most workshops have both. Combination planer thicknessers combine both functions into one machine to save space.