Jointer vs Planer: What Each One Does, and the Order to Mill In
A jointer flattens one face and squares one edge; a planer makes the opposite face parallel to the first at a chosen thickness. You need both to mill rough lumber: the jointer gives you a reference surface, the planer gives you dimension. Neither can do the other’s job.
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Quick navigation: what a jointer does · what a planer does · the order to mill in · snipe · combo machines · jointer picks · planer pick · the verdict
If you buy lumber surfaced on all four sides and build with it as-is, you need neither machine. The moment you start buying rough stock — which is cheaper, available in better species, and the only way to get thicknesses the big-box store does not stock — you need both.
What a Jointer Does
A jointer removes the cup, bow and twist from one face of a board, and then squares one edge to that face. What it gives you is a reference: one flat face and one straight edge at ninety degrees, from which every other measurement on the board can be taken.
What is a twist? Imagine you are at a shabby bar on one of those high chairs and the thing rocks because the four legs are not even. The same happens to a board, and it will put that rock into whatever you build with it.
The machine is a flat bed in two halves with a spinning cutterhead between them — knives set into a rotating drum, not a single blade. You lower the infeed table to set how much it takes off, then push the board across, keeping pressure over the high spots so the machine cuts them and not the low ones.
What a jointer cannot do
It cannot make the two faces of a board parallel, and it cannot bring several boards to the same thickness. You set the depth of each cut, not the thickness of the finished piece. Run a board over a jointer repeatedly and you get a thinner board that is still wedge-shaped in cross-section, because the bed is referencing the surface you just cut.
It is also limited by width. A 6-inch jointer flattens boards up to 6 inches wide, full stop, and wider stock has to be ripped, jointed and glued back up.
What a Planer Does
A thickness planer takes a board that already has one flat face and cuts the opposite face parallel to it, at a thickness you dial in. The board rides on a bed; the cutterhead is above it, in the roof of the machine, which is why you cannot see the knives.
That geometry is the whole difference. The planer references the bed, so whatever face is down gets copied to the face coming off the top. Feed it a twisted board and you get a thinner twisted board, planed to a consistent thickness — which is exactly why the jointer has to come first.
What a planer cannot do
It cannot flatten a board. It cannot square an edge. And it will not fix the one thing people most often buy it to fix, which is a board that rocks.
The Order Matters, and It Is Always the Same
Rough board to finished stock, four steps, no substitutions:
1. Joint one face. Pick the face that is closest to flat already and make it properly flat. This is the reference for everything else.
2. Plane to thickness. Jointed face down on the planer bed, cut the top face parallel. Take light passes off alternating faces if the board is thick and you want to keep it from moving.
3. Joint one edge. Jointed face against the jointer fence, square an edge to it.
4. Rip to width. Jointed edge against the table saw fence.
Skip step 1 and steps 2 through 4 inherit the twist. That is the single most common milling mistake, and it is why a planer on its own is a half-solution.
Snipe, and What Actually Stops It
Snipe is the slightly deeper cut a planer takes in the first and last few inches of a board, caused by the stock being gripped by only one feed roller as it enters and leaves. It shows up as a shallow dip you discover after you have cut your joinery.
Three things reduce it, in order of how much they help. Lock the cutterhead carriage — movement in the carriage is the mechanism, and better planers lock it automatically rather than asking you to remember. Support the board level with the bed going in and coming out, with infeed and outfeed tables or roller stands. And run boards through nose-to-tail so the snipe lands on scrap rather than on your workpiece.
Leaving boards a few inches overlong and trimming the ends afterwards is the cheapest fix of all, and the one professionals actually rely on.
Jointer/Planer Combos
A combination machine puts both functions in one cabinet, sharing a cutterhead, and typically gives you a much wider jointer than you could otherwise afford — 10 or 12 inches instead of 6. The trade-off is conversion: every time you switch tasks you flip tables and move the fence, which is a minute or two that discourages the alternating-pass technique good milling depends on.
They also mostly live outside the benchtop price bracket and want 230-volt service. Worth looking at if you have the budget and the panel for it; for most garage shops two separate machines are the practical answer, and the rest of this page assumes that.
The Jointer
Two worth buying, and the cheaper one has the better cutterhead.
WEN JT630H
A 6-inch benchtop jointer with a spiral cutterhead: twelve staggered HSS blades instead of two long straight knives. That matters more than any other spec on a jointer. A helical head enters the wood in a shearing cut rather than a chopping one, so it tears out far less on figured grain, runs noticeably quieter, and when a blade dulls you rotate or swap one small insert instead of resetting a full-length knife.
It gives you a 30-by-6-inch table, up to 1/8 inch of material per pass, and a 19-3/4 by 4-1/4-inch fence that bevels to 45 degrees. For a machine in this bracket, a spiral head is unusual and it is the reason this is the first recommendation rather than the budget one.
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CRAFTSMAN CMEW020
This is the machine that replaced the PORTER-CABLE PC160JT this page used to recommend — same corporate family, same class, and the PC160JT is no longer sold. A 10-amp 6-inch benchtop jointer with variable speed from 6,000 to 11,000 rpm and a two-knife head with jackscrew levelling, which makes setting knife height a turn of a screw rather than a session with a dial indicator.
Variable speed is the argument for it over the WEN: slower for hardwoods and figured stock, faster for softwood, which is a real lever on tearout when you do not have a spiral head. The 4-1/4-inch centre-mounted fence is supported through the whole cut.
Straight knives on a jointer are the older approach, and they are not a defect — they take a fine finish on straight-grained wood and the knives are cheap. Pick this one if variable speed and the jackscrew setup appeal more than the helical head.
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The Planer
DEWALT DW735X
Thirteen inches wide, 15 amps, a 20,000 rpm motor driving the cutterhead at 10,000 rpm, and a three-knife head rather than the usual two — which is where the longer knife life and the finer surface come from.
Two features earn it the price. The two-speed gearbox lets you pick 96 or 179 cuts per inch: fast for hogging material off, slow for the final passes where surface quality is the only thing that matters. And the carriage lock engages automatically, which goes directly at the snipe problem above without depending on you to remember a lever.
The fan-assisted chip ejection is not a luxury on a 13-inch planer. These machines produce shavings by the bin-load, and a planer that drops them back onto the bed presses them into the board.
It is the only planer recommendation here because it is the one that has stayed both current and in stock. If the price is out of range, our review of the WEN 6550 covers the cheaper end honestly.
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Questions People Ask
Can you use a jointer as a planer?
No. A jointer references the surface it just cut, so it thins a board without ever making its faces parallel. You will get a thinner wedge.
Can you use a planer as a jointer?
Not directly, though there is a workaround: shim a twisted board on a sled so it cannot rock, run it through to get one flat face, then flip it and plane normally. It works, it is fiddly, and it is how people with a planer and no jointer get by.
What is the difference between a surface planer and a thickness planer?
A surface planer is another name for a jointer in some markets — the cutterhead is below the work. A thickness planer has the cutterhead above the work and sets a dimension. The same words mean different machines depending on who is speaking, which is most of why this is confusing.
Which should I buy first?
The planer, for most people. You can flatten a face with a hand plane or a planer sled and then let the machine do the dimensioning, but nothing substitutes for a planer’s ability to bring a stack of boards to one thickness. Buy the jointer when flattening by hand starts to annoy you.
The Verdict
They are not alternatives, and a page that frames them as a choice is doing you a disservice. Mill in the order above and each machine does a job the other physically cannot. If the budget only stretches to one, buy the DW735X and flatten faces on a sled until it stops being tolerable — then add the WEN JT630H, because at this price a spiral cutterhead is the upgrade that shows up in the wood. For what to do with milled stock, see our guides to wood planers and belt sanders versus planers.