John in Tennessee

I think I heard Santy asking...

BHOFM

I don't have a jointer, but I use my portable planer
a lot.

I have a hand held power planer that gets a work out
now and then.

knotscott

It's best to have both...they're awesome used in tandem, but if I could only have one I'd go with the planer first. With the help of a planer sled, a planer can be coaxed into doing some jointer functions. It's much more difficult to get the jointer to do what a planer does.

Patrick

Planer.No doubt.

__________________
~Patrick~

GeorgeC

I went 20 years without a planer. Would not have been without my jointer/planer. Finally bought a planner last year. Find it very useful.

George

bradnailer

Planer

John in Tennessee

And the Winner is............................................PLAN ER

Plane Chatter

It would be a tough choice for me, but if it helps it's possible to do some light jointing on your router table if you offset the outfeed fence a hair.

clarionflyer

I would have to say this depends on what you're doing. When I'm milling up rough cut wood, the planer is great, but I mostly run the jointer and TS.
If you're blessed with a tightly tuned saw, the planer is probably more of a necessity. But I think the jointer is what gives that crisp professional look (you know, the one where everything fits like it's supposed to ).

allthunbs

Save your money, get both. Better still, look around the garage and yard sales. You'll be amaized at what you can pick up. I got a small 6" x 4' Delta jointer. I compared it to a Busy Bee/Jet/a whole bunch of other brands and their seems to be 1 or 2 basic 6" jointers out there. Everything else is based on these two designs. I go to HD or other big box and compare to mine and they're all identical. One will have a different lever handle but it functions exactly the same way. I would think interchangable parts as well. My Busy Bee rep tells me his jointer blades will fit my tool as well as a bunch of other brands.

I bought both pretty much at the same time. Now, all of my projects start with jointer, then planer, then table saw and back to jointer. It is so much nicer to work with dimensioned lumber. The vendors never do a very good job at getting my dimensions exact.

I hope this helps.

Allthunbs

Nate1778

They both come out at the same time in my shop, I love them both, but if I had to choose it would also be the planer.