Buying Sawn Timber + Planer Thicknesser V Planed Timber

[ziplock9000]

I currently buy planed redwood timber that I glue together to make backing boards for plaques. It works out about to be £26.40 for 4.8m delivered.

I was thinking about buying a very cheap planer/thicknesser for £160 ish and then buying sawn timber and doing the planing myself.

I was expecting this to be cheaper overall, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Just buying planed directly seems to be cheaper.

I've even looked for odd wood (like scaffold board etc) on Facebook Marketplace that I could plane and it's again, more expensive.

Is this the general consensus for planed softwood like redwood?

 

[Spectric]

All depends upon the task in hand, redwood can be fine for many jobs but check it for both squareness and sizes. For other jobs using more exotic wood then having a decent P/T can help but again access to a decent wood supplier can be just as easy if they can provide the wood needed to the size you want.

Size can be a factor unless you can work with the off the shelf sizes, once you need odd sizes t get the look then having a P/T would be very handy but buying a cheap one could just give more issues than you had before as they do not just work out of the box as many have found.

 

[Katomi woodsmith]

I use junk wood for a lot of my projects, even when I buy PAR wood I have to resize.
After hand planning for 30 plus years I bought a p/t ..brill
As other said there are the neg sides
Eg I was working some junk wood, religiously removed the nails....rechecked ok
Odd noise as the wood went through.... there was stones embedded in the wood.. notched the blade in a number of places
A lot more expense and agro to sort the p/t than if I had been using a hand tool.
I had to hand plane the final 2 mm to take the ridges out.

 

[Orraloon]

While notched baldes are a bug&#ration there is a quick fix if the blades are still sharp. Move the blades sideways a bit so the notches no longer line up. No more ridges.
To the OPs question. A planer/thicknesser can be very handy and save a lot of the grunt work sizing timber. It gives you the freedom to size wood as you like rather than being restricted to the size of wood available at the store. Recycle wood as well but as said above be careful what you put through. Lastly picking the cheapest machine out there may be a bit of a gamble as to how long it will last. Check warranty and those sorts of things.
Regards
John

 

[David66]

Slight word of caution on buying cheap planers thicknesses. I bought the Rutland one. Pretty hopeless for anything over 1000mm in length, struggles with hardwood, and died in a plume of smoke after about a month (to be fair, probably user error - trying to take off too much of an old oak board in one pass). Invested in one of the bigger Axminster machines, so much better (as it should be a 4 times. the price). As my mother used to say "buy cheap buy dear"!!

 

[ziplock9000]

While notched baldes are a bug&#ration there is a quick fix if the blades are still sharp. Move the blades sideways a bit so the notches no longer line up. No more ridges.
To the OPs question. A planer/thicknesser can be very handy and save a lot of the grunt work sizing timber. It gives you the freedom to size wood as you like rather than being restricted to the size of wood available at the store. Recycle wood as well but as said above be careful what you put through. Lastly picking the cheapest machine out there may be a bit of a gamble as to how long it will last. Check warranty and those sorts of things.
Regards
John

While I understand that and can see how it's useful, I'd only be purchasing one to reduce my costs as a small business that needs softwood plaques. I'd only be getting it to replace getting pre-planed softwood timber so that extra utility will likely be lost on me for now. My usual methodology is to get a very cheap machine that may break quickly to dip my toe and if all seems good, I get a much better version later on rather than getting a moderately expensive one at the start.

 

[ziplock9000]

Slight word of caution on buying cheap planers thicknesses. I bought the Rutland one. Pretty hopeless for anything over 1000mm in length, struggles with hardwood, and died in a plume of smoke after about a month (to be fair, probably user error - trying to take off too much of an old oak board in one pass). Invested in one of the bigger Axminster machines, so much better (as it should be a 4 times. the price). As my mother used to say "buy cheap buy dear"!!

Yeah I've heard a lot of bad stories about Rutland gear in general, but their work yard table saw is terrible from reviews and very dangerous!
The very cheap one I've been looking at has reasonable reviews for the price, so that's not a concern for me. It's just if it's even worth doing at all replacing the pre-planed timber I order with sawn timber +planer.

 

[Beau]

I've never found bought in planed redwood very dry. You pay a lot more for some planed timber that promptly moves and then you have to plane it flat!

 

[ziplock9000]

I've never found bought in planed redwood very dry. You pay a lot more for some planed timber that promptly moves and then you have to plane it flat!

I get mine from a company that begins with a H... And it's cheaper than the sawn wood + planer. It does move, but not enough to be an issue when I glue up and let it climatise. It's very rare that it's too much to be used. I don't do any additional planing.

 

[Ross Buchanan]

Virtually every job done by every chippie uses PSE redwood. It is generally good enough for carpentry work. The entire supply chain is geared to supplying reasonable quality PSE redwood, reasonably planed, reasonably square at a reasonable price. I would guess that more than 80% of work is done with the stuff.
Sawn timber is therefore a niche product that the builders merchants and regular suppliers do not carry, and as with any niche product, it comes with a higher price.
If you are able to use off-the-shelf timber for your work, you likely won't save any money by finishing it yourself.
A cheap planer-thicknesser will be ok for a few cuts, then it will let you down.
If you value your time in the equation, that is a significant cost, as you put boards through taking of 1/16" at a time. Space for infeed and outfeed. Blade sharpening. Better dust extractor, and what the heck am I going to do with all these sacks of shavings....
And now the neighbours are complaining to the council about the noise....

 

[Katomi woodsmith]

My machine is a Titan, only diy use but three years on still ok apart from knotches, that are my fault

 

[ziplock9000]

My machine is a Titan, only diy use but three years on still ok apart from knotches, that are my fault

That's the one I was looking at. Seen lots of videos about it. It seems to work fine to get my foot on the ladder for a 2-3 years and then buy something a lot more substantial if the needed arises. Although after investigating and asking here, it's not worth getting one at all for my needs.

 

[Katomi woodsmith]

Ok well pleased to have helped

 

[thikone]

What did work for me is doing jointing with hand planes and then using cheap thicknesser for other two sides, even without chips collector.
Of course, I would then also touch the other two sides with smoothing hand plane eventually.

 

[Orraloon]

While I understand that and can see how it's useful, I'd only be purchasing one to reduce my costs as a small business that needs softwood plaques. I'd only be getting it to replace getting pre-planed softwood timber so that extra utility will likely be lost on me for now. My usual methodology is to get a very cheap machine that may break quickly to dip my toe and if all seems good, I get a much better version later on rather than getting a moderately expensive one at the start.

If you are getting results doing what you are doing with par timber then just keep going. I had assumed you were doing general woodworking and then processing wood would eventually be something you would be aiming for. Cost per unit has to add up before it's worth doing.
Regards
John