Thickness Planer decision?

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

Very nice...she did good!

[Glen Butler]

Lucky man. I am in the planer first camp. As others have said. You can make a sled for the planer, and you can clamp a long piece of MDF to your fence to joint boards, but it's great that you can get both now.

[Richard Dragin]

Congrats on the xmas gift and the girl friend! These discussions come up all the time and I say you could flip a coin on which to buy first. It doesn't matter because you need them both and soon after getting one,you will realize it and get the other.

[Victor Robinson]

She's a keeper! Man, I drop hints to my wife left and right about what I want and they just fall on deaf ears.

[Matthew Hills]

Congrats on both!

If it wasn't too late, I would've recommended planer first, and advocated using a hand plane to knock off bow/twist first.

With planer, the basic work (thicknessing) seemed pretty automatic, and I just had to deal with a couple of issues:
- tearout: keep track of grain direction as you feed in
- snipe: adjust feed tables to minimize; use scrap pieces to pretty much eliminate
- dents: use dust collection and keep debris out of the cutting area before feeding in your work piece (note: don't try and clear out with planer running)

Jointing had all of these issues, and also required some care in use to actually make progress in flattening a board.

Hopefully you'll find a good project to reciprocate and encourage further gifts along these lines!

Matt