Do You Need a Planer or a Jointer?

Sooner or later, every beginner reads that “you need to flatten your stock” and discovers that flattening stock apparently requires two machines that together cost more than every other tool in the shop combined. It is the point where a lot of people conclude that real woodworking is out of reach.

It is not, and the reason is simple: you can buy wood that is already flat. These machines exist to save money on lumber, not to make woodworking possible. Here is what each one does, why one cannot replace the other, and the three ways to get flat, square stock without owning either.

What each machine actually does

The jointer makes things flat and square

A jointer is a long bed split into two tables with a spinning cutterhead between them. You push a board across it and it takes a shaving off the bottom. Because the board rides on the outfeed table — a fixed reference — each pass removes a little more of the high spots, and after several passes one face is flat.

Stand the board on that newly flat face, run it along the fence, and the jointer makes an edge square to it. That is the whole job: one flat face, one square edge. It has no way at all to control thickness.

The planer makes things parallel and a set thickness

A thickness planer is a cutterhead above a flat bed, with rollers that pull the board through at a fixed height. It cuts the top face parallel to whatever the bottom face is resting on.

Read that again, because it is the crux of the whole subject: it makes the top face parallel to the bottom face. If the bottom face is bowed, the rollers press the bow flat as the board passes under the cutterhead, and the board springs back to exactly the same bow when it comes out — only thinner. A planer cannot flatten a board.

Which is why the order is fixed

The traditional four-square sequence is: flatten one face on the jointer, square one edge on the jointer, plane the second face parallel on the planer, then rip the last edge parallel on the table saw. Skip step one and everything afterwards is parallel to a curve.

Option 1: buy dressed lumber and skip both

Lumber sold as S4S — surfaced four sides — has already been through this process at the mill. It is what every board at a home center is, and what most hardwood dealers will sell you if you ask. It costs more per board foot, and the premium buys you machines you do not have to own, house, power or breathe around.

For a beginner this is not a compromise, it is the right answer. Two or three projects a year does not justify a planer, and the money is better spent on clamps, a decent saw and wood. Our home center lumber guide covers picking boards that are actually straight, which matters more than any machine when you are buying pre-dressed stock.

One caveat: dressed lumber is only flat on the day it was dressed. Wood keeps moving with humidity, so a board that sat in a damp warehouse will move again in your shop. Let boards sit in the space for a week before you cut them, and see wood movement explained.

Option 2: flatten by hand

For the board widths a beginner actually uses, a hand plane is genuinely competitive. The process is:

1. Set the board on the bench and find the rock. Two diagonal corners will touch; the other two will not.
2. Check for twist with winding sticks — two straight identical offcuts stood on edge at each end. Sight across them; if their top edges are not parallel, the board is twisted.
3. Plane the high corners down, working diagonally across the grain at first, re-checking with the sticks as you go.
4. Finish along the grain with a smoothing plane. Then mark the flat face, gauge a thickness line all round, and plane the second face down to it.

It takes roughly fifteen minutes for a board a beginner would use, it is completely silent, and it produces shavings you sweep up rather than a cloud you breathe. Our hand plane guide covers the technique and best hand planes for beginners covers what to buy.

The honest limit is width and volume. Flattening one 8-inch board is pleasant; flattening thirty of them for a tabletop is a weekend.

Option 3: a planer and a sled

If you want to buy one machine, buy the planer — not the jointer.

A planer sled is a flat carrier board, usually MDF or plywood, with the workpiece shimmed on top so it cannot rock, and stops at each end so it cannot slide. Run the whole assembly through the planer and the cutterhead flattens the top face, because the sled — not the bowed board — is what the bed is referencing. Flip the board, drop the sled, and plane the second face parallel.

That gives you the jointer’s job done by the planer, at the cost of a few minutes of shimming per board. The edge still needs squaring, which a table saw or a hand plane does easily.

There is no equivalent trick in the other direction. A jointer cannot control thickness, so a jointer-only shop still cannot make two boards the same.

What a planer really costs you beyond the price

• Chips. A benchtop planer produces more waste per minute than every other tool in a small shop put together, and a standard shop vac fills in minutes. Read dust collection for a small shop before you buy one, not after.
• Noise. Benchtop planers are among the loudest tools sold for home use. In an attached garage this is a genuine constraint on when you can work.
• Power. A 15-amp planer wants a circuit largely to itself. Running one down a thin extension cord is how motors get cooked — see garage shop power and extension cords.
• Space. The machine is small; the space it needs is not. You need the board’s full length in front and behind it, which for an 8-foot board means about 18 feet of clear run.
• Knives. They dull, they nick, and a nick puts a ridge in every board until you shift or replace them.

When it does become worth it

Three signals, and you want at least two of them:

1. You are buying enough lumber that the price difference is annoying. Rough stock is meaningfully cheaper per board foot, and at volume that adds up quickly.
2. You want thicknesses the shops do not sell. Dressed stock comes in a few standard thicknesses. Anything else means dressing it yourself.
3. You have found a source of interesting wood. Local sawmills, storm-fall timber and reclaimed boards are almost always rough, and this is the real reason most people end up buying a planer.

If you are buying, a moisture meter is the small companion purchase that stops you machining wet wood — which moves after you machine it and wastes the entire exercise.

Tool	Why you need it	Price
WEN PL1326 15-Amp 13 in Spiral Benchtop Thickness Planer	The cheaper way in, with a spiral cutterhead. Pair it with a shop-made sled and it does the jointer's job too.	$418.00
DeWalt DW734 12-1/2 in Benchtop Planer, 15 Amp, Three-Knife	The buy-once option if you already know you will keep dressing your own stock.	$549.00
General Tools MMD4E Moisture Meter for Wood, Walls and Leak Detection	Tells you whether a rough board has acclimated. Machining wet wood wastes the whole job.	$37.70
Amazon Basics No. 4 Adjustable Smoothing Bench Plane	The no-machine route. A smoothing plane and two winding sticks flatten a board in about fifteen minutes.	$28.22
Starter kit subtotal		$1032.92

Live Amazon prices as of August 31, 2026; they change, and we don’t display stale numbers — a tool with no live price shows “Check price” and is left out of the subtotal. #ad How we’re funded.

The answer, plainly

No, you do not need either machine to start. Buy dressed lumber, let it acclimate in the shop for a week, check it with a straightedge, and build. When a board is slightly out, a hand plane fixes it in minutes.

When rough lumber starts looking like real money — and it will — buy a thickness planer and make a sled. The jointer is the third machine, not the first, and plenty of good shops never buy one at all.