Everything About Wood Planers And How They Work

As a wood worker, have you ever tried to order wooden boards of custom thickness from your local wood supplier? You will agree with me that the experience was something to forget. It is usually frustrating.

What is a wood planer?

When you order boards from your local wood supplier, you are usually tasked with the job of resizing these boards to the different sizes and thickness you want them to be before you can use them. And even though you can employ tools such as your table saw in reducing the thickness of your board, it is usually difficult.

That is where wood planers come into the equation. Reducing board thickness have never been easier when using other tools than when using wood planers. Wood planers make the job of reducing board thickness easy.

So, in simple words, a wood is a woodworking tool used for planing boards or shaping boards to a particular thickness, producing flat ends on both sides of the board. Traditional wood planers usually come in the form of a handheld planing tool. 

On the other hand, modern planers are equipped with planing platforms which produce consistent, accurate and quick adjustments to boards. Modern planer machines can be controlled both mechanically and electronically, but they are mostly controlled electronically.

How wood planers work

To plane a board and reduce it’s thickness, you need to set the cut depth of the planer. You can do that either by adjusting the cutter-head or drum of the planer or you can raise or lower the planing platform depending on what you want to do. The in-feed roller carries your board through the machine as you feed-in the board. 

The board passes through the spinning blades of the cutter head which remove the excess wood from the board. The completed section of the board is systematically moved out of the planer machine by the out-feed roller. All these helps to produce a smooth and consistent reduction in thickness across the wooden board.