Makita Planer Inverted

[watson]

Thanks all for your input.
I know I didn't mention safety guards and fences, but from my reading, I figured that a jointer was exactly that, a planerinverted.
Not a regular thing to be done, as I am rather attached to my fingers and all the other pink appendages.
I was really chuffed at all the "don't do it" posts, shows the care that people have on this forum...so I'll think about it a bit more, and do a mock-up and post same, and see what the general consensus is.
To give you some idea of how I care for my fingers, I get puffed using any sort of cutting device in the shed...then I woke up why...I was holding my breath!!
Regards All, and thanks.

Noel

[BrettC]

This is an interesting discussion. The first power tool that I bought was a hand held planer, used it a few times but only ever found it useful for trimming jamming door etc..

A jointer has two seperate 'beds' that form the tables (in feed and out feed) these can both move independently from the cutter head and this is why they can straighten wood. The wood is passed from the (slightly lowered) bed into the blade and the wood is then fed onto the outfeed table where pressure is then applied to keep the wood flat and the cut is completed. A better explanation of what I mean is here http://www.northwestwoodworking.com/.../article1.html

A hand held planer does not have movable 'beds' and therefore will only ever just take wood off based on your cutting stroke i.e. length and frequency of your passes, for this reason it probably would never give good results inverted as a 'table'. It might do the job near enough but would never (IMHO) really give a truly straightened peice of timber.

I would do as suggested above sell the planer and try for a cheap bench top jointer you won't look back

[silentC]

Not sure what type of electric planer you have but all the ones I have ever seen have an adjustable infeed foot. This functions exactly the same way that the infeed table on a jointer does, albeit on a much smaller scale. You can also mimic the action of raising and lowering the outfeed table on a jointer by adjusting the height of the blades in the cutter head, although it's unlikely you would ever need to do this.

[BrettC]

Silent, think you got me there...just back from checking the old planer and you are right the infeed table is what is lowered - been that long since I used it like I said...(says while looking at the ground in lowered voice ).

So I guess the concept should work.

Having said that it depends on what you want to make with it but if you are after furniture or the like go for the bench top jointer.

[silentC]

Yep, I'd definitely go with a proper jointer. But in the spirit of bush mechanics, it can be done.

[TassieKiwi]

Yep - you could fix the 'front' of the planer to an extension table, and have this movable for the depth of cut. Sounds like shagging about a bit.

Festool has the machine mounted at 90° to the table, I think, so that it is the fence too. This might be a whole lot safer, but you'd need to have a reasonably true face first.

[watson]

You're dead right.........its all in the interest of "bush mechanics". Making an un-used tool useful again, and time and buggarising around aren't that important out here.
Thanks to BrettC for the fine woodworking link, as no one within cooee of here owns a jointer that I could get a look at.
Regards,
Noel