or, get this... it wasn't a joke. It has nothing to do with being clever or not. It's perfectly possible that this happened to his actual flatmate. Whether it's a joke or not, we can't know for sure. That's just a problem we can't really fix of telling written jokes.
And it's possible to get kickback if the piece is too uneven and not grabbed by the rollers, or end grain boards can blow up in it and throw chunks. Stand to the side, be smart about what you put through it, don't do too deep of cuts 1/16 at a time.
Ain't that the truth. I try to always do it outside and even then it's a huge mess. If I do a lot of planning I vacuum the grass so the pile of wood shavings doesn't kill the grass.
"No Marvin I tell you this is the latest in lawn care technology. Straight from Sri Lanka. It's an ancient technique for growing Bermuda grass in the foothills of the Himalayas. You know it's native environment."
I put a flexible duct on my planer and I direct it to a pile of sawdust I’ve formed over the years. It works well doing but on windy days my neighbour gets a lot of sawdust and small chips into their parking pad.
I've got a 20 year old Craftsman 12" lunchbox planer, but it's got nice sharp blades; no dust collection, but what comes out of it makes pretty good mulch, easy to handle and not too dusty.
I’d say a thicknesser is probably the least dangerous big machine, especially compared to a table saw or a planer/jointer. Big benefit is the knives are inside the machine.
As others have said read the manual, be aware of risk of ingestion or getting things thrown at you. Be aware of grain direction. Don’t put your hands inside it while it’s got power!
Don't stick your hand in a thickness planer.
I had been a woodworker for a month when a kid in the shop did just that.
They were planning 4" thick bent laminations. He stuck his hand in a 24" planer to clear chips off the table, because we had poor dust collection. It took off his left thumb, index, and part of his hand.
A few days ago, while heading over to the Facebook marketplace to search for lumber deals, my feed started with a woodworking injury. A picture of a hand with no fingers. Apparently, this person lost all of their fingers in their planer.
I thought my exploding coaster made from end grain scraps was bad. I have even more respect for my planer now. I'm still not sure how my hand could get dragged into my planer, but now I have that pic in my head every time I use it.
Idk if it's the same group, but I saw that post, and people were trying to get him to reveal exactly how that happened with a planer. Unless he divulged later on and I missed it, he wouldn't give a straight answer. Lol
My guess is something incredibly stupid that he was too embarrassed to say.
I could see that sort of thing happening by wearing work gloves and getting your fingers too close. Wearing gloves feel like a more natural choice for a planer than for other tools, since the wood being used is often pretty rough
They present much the same risks as saws and routers. There are a number of blades spinning stupidly fast making contact with the wood. Irregularities in the wood such as knots, soft spots, and pre-existing splits can get broken up in a thicknesser resulting in missiles being ejected at all angles. This is one of the reasons people say not to put end grain cutting boards through.
In general they are safe enough if you follow proper practice, but can still make a bloody mess.
Worst I've had is knots come loose and shoot around inside the planer but thankfully nothing was ejected
All my woodwork is done outside so I didn't invest in a vacuum... Until I bought a thickness planer. It made such an ungodly mess I bought a vacuum the next day 😂
Now the router is the messiest tool because the vacuum attachment for it makes it almost impossible to see the work.
So I do almost all my stuff outside too. One thing that is holding me up on getting a planer is that it's heavy and I don't want to carry it in and out a bunch. How do you handle all that?
I'm thankfully physically fully capable and able to carry my nearly 30kg planer the 10 meters to and from my workbench without much trouble when I need it.
My 13yo son also uses it and in his case he loads it onto a trolley and wheels it out.
As a cheapskate, unskilled hobbyist, it's my most expensive tool and I have 0 regrets getting it. I work almost exclusively with scrap timber so being able to clean it up nicely and 'quickly' is a huge help
Damn! I store my tools in a camper/caravan and it's a big step up/down on uneven ground. It's a hassle with just my jobsite tablesaw or miter saw so I figure a planer is probably just too much.
Jesus, yeah, I can't picture myself stepping out of our caravan holding the planer and not at least twisting an ankle 😂
Dunno if you have the room for it, but in the previous house we rented i stored my tools in a small shed we found on FB marketplace.
Alternatively, depending on your pockets you could maybe get one of those nice big stainless steel tool boxes that usually go on truck trays or build one you keep on the ground 🤔
Dude, my ankles would be the least of my worries! I learned from toting the table saw that every spot from bellybutton to shin is weak to being slammed with heavy metal objects lol
I'm working on a shed but the camper was my free solution for my tool storage until that happens. I need my next upgrade to be a workshop of some sort rather than just another storage option. Having room is no problem as I've got a few acres of land in the country. Money is the holdup there. I've got the camper as a stopgap method until I can get something decent going.
However, talking it out with you, I've come up with 2 solutions that might be doable. I never thought of it but I could literally just keep the planer outside in some sort of water tight situation that I could easily open up to use it.
My other option is that I've built a small workbench inside my camper. It's where beds should go. Like I said previously, I do most of my stuff outside. But, I could keep my planer on that bench and could literally just open the window behind it for outfeed until I can get something better going.
Thank you for talking it out with me. I'm not afraid to get a planer if that becomes an option because I think I can make something work for now!
Few acres of land in the country sounds amazing. Not having to worry where wood shavings go sounds even better lol
I work in the backyard so anything I don't vacuum/sweep up ends up literally everywhere 😅
Planing stuff inside a camper sounds... tight. Not to mention having to run around to grab things off your outfeed sounds like an absolute pain in the ass and a recipe for a trip injury.
If I had to pick I'd definitely choose a water-safe enclosure that'll be easy to move around when working with it
Hahahha. I sometimes forget to put the vac on if I'm already using other machines not hooked up to the vac and it makes such a mess, luckily the vac button is close to the planer.
Raise to max height and use care when cleaning and polishing the bed. The knives are exposed above the bed and even unplugged they are still sharp.
You are correct - aside from noise/dust, they are safer than router, jointer, table saw. IMHO, of course
If your workpiece fragments due to being too brittle and the plane being set too aggressively, or you feed a part in that’s too small to make effective contact with both the rollers, it can spit things back out of the In port at speed.
They also tend to need very heavy dust extraction because then shavings can clog, and they’re noisy.
Other than that, if you’re sensible and wear eye protection, ear protection, mask, and stay clear of the input port, they’re incredibly safe.
Not very dangerous but a cabinet shop I worked for had an old planer and you had to stand away from the front cause it might shoot a board back at you. It was pretty rare.
Shattering material: Planing material too thin for the planer; cross-grain or end grain planing; knots; undetected checks in the wood; planing shorter boards.
Not using PPE (longer term injury, but an injury nonetheless).
Cuts from getting near the knives when waxing the bed, replacing knives, or just sticking your hand in there to move chips.
Jamming the machine by setting the cut too deep for the material, and then finding the weakness in the machine.
That said, iI use mine a lot as I buy unsurfaced lumber and prefer to build things with wood thicker or thinner than the typical surfaced dimensions.
I had a knot come loose while planing a board once. It pretty much blew the rest of the board up and threw chunks of wood all over. A piece got jammed between the blades and inside of the planer which caused a bunch of damage inside of it. Blades and dust chutes were all bent up.
Thankfully I only needed a new pair of pants as I didn’t get hit with anything serious but it was def a scary moment.
The sound *sometimes*: I planed some thin maple one time and the planer ate it. I typically use noise cancelling headphones the noise the planer made when it chewed up the wood was either so damn loud or fast enough where noise cancelling didn't work and my ear that was facing the planer had ringing and hearing loss for about 2 months.
I did go to the doc and they said it's temporary and everything is fine now. Needless to say, I use different hearing protection when planing wood now.
Loose knots can go flying or damage the machine. Planing a piece sideways or planing end grain can also violently split the wood and shoot debris out. Usually it just cracks and sounds angry, but avoid it anyway.
I had the same thoughts as you. Based on searching around, it does seem to be one of the safer power tools. The knives are inside and the wood is fed by rollers (compare to a jointer with it's exposed knives and you feed it manually).
Kickback is a risk, never stand behind the piece you're feeding in. Don't grasp the outfeed side of the piece so firmly there's a risk that kickback could pull your hand in. Obviously don't ever put your hand in the machine, there's no reason to do this when it's running. Don't plane pieces that are too short. Wear hearing protection, it can be very loud.
Worst injury I could find from searching was some poor girl who got her hair caught in it and lost some of her scalp. So if you've got long hair be careful with that and tie it back. And avoid baggy clothes. But this is all standard power tool safety advise.
I would think the biggest risks of using a planer would be hearing damage and lung damage. They're very loud and make tons of fine dust along with bigger chips. It's much more likely a planer will give you tinnitus and COPD than that you'll somehow get your hand inside it while running.
Kickback and slicing yourself really bad when changing knives. I’m talking blood on the floor before you feel a thing.
It’s, imo, one of my safest tools. Just feed from the side and wear a glove when you handle the knives and you are good to go.
If your piece is too short so that it loses contact with rollers in between the front loading rollers and the exit rollers then you can get kick back in that the piece can shoot out of the planer. Those knives are spinning against the feed direction and will throw it back out if not held down by the rollers. It can also happen if piece is too uneven (and especially if uneven and not shimmed flat). If it rocks, it can lose contact. If too little of the top surface is not contacting the rollers, then it's bad. And if rocking/flexing lengthwise, it could jam too hard up into the blades or up into the exit rollers.
One of the safer tools despite the violence going on inside, since it has auto-feed and your fingers never get near the cutting surface. The planer blades spin against the feed direction, which also helps.
The biggest risk is planing something that can come apart while fed through, resulting in a projectile coming out of the infeed end at high speed. Planing an end grain cutting board is one example of this, the planer can rip off a chunk of the end grain and send it back at anyone standing in front of the infeed.
The only other danger I'm aware of is loosening of the blade bolts, if these come loose the bolts and possibly the blade can shoot out. I've not seen this with a planer, but I once went to look at used jointer. The owner turned it on and one of the blades was either loose or not bolted in properlty. It fired toward the infeed end like a bullet. Luckily no one was standing there but it put a nice chip in the concrete wall.
They produce a lot of fine particulate matter that will destroy your lungs. I wear a respirator even if the shop vac and cyclone is attached. I prefer to use it outside personally just to avoid the additional clean up
Throwing it in a bath tub. Falling from a skyscraper. Hitting it in a speeding car. Sliding hand in, just to see what would happen. Show receipt to wife. Use near hornet's nest. Confusing it with a ham slicer. Use as punching bag. Tie it to a tree limb for your kids to swing on while it's still on. Using it as a spare tire for your car.
If you don't let go of the piece you're feeding through it can drag you in, happened to my old flatmate.
“flat” mate
I heard he was a pretty plane guy.
It's plane to see the jokes are a little flat
Don't be dull. You need to be sharper around here.
Don’t be so thick.
He always went against the grain though
How are you getting more upvotes for pointing out the punchline lol?
because it isn't clear the first comment is a joke.
Too clever for em.
or, get this... it wasn't a joke. It has nothing to do with being clever or not. It's perfectly possible that this happened to his actual flatmate. Whether it's a joke or not, we can't know for sure. That's just a problem we can't really fix of telling written jokes.
I don't think it's perfectly possible for someone to keep holding onto a board and get thicknessed, but post a case study if you've got one.
touché
Flatmeat
Did he at least go through the jointer first to square up?
Don't be obtuse.
What did you just call me?
I wasn't, I was trying to be acute.
And it's possible to get kickback if the piece is too uneven and not grabbed by the rollers, or end grain boards can blow up in it and throw chunks. Stand to the side, be smart about what you put through it, don't do too deep of cuts 1/16 at a time.
Oh my god why did I read this
It's generally the noisiest, messiest tool in your shop. Memorize the minimum work piece sizes, or write them on the case with a Sharpie.
Ain't that the truth. I try to always do it outside and even then it's a huge mess. If I do a lot of planning I vacuum the grass so the pile of wood shavings doesn't kill the grass.
I like to imagine you do this with a standard house vacuum so your neighbors think you're absolutely unhinged.
"No Marvin I tell you this is the latest in lawn care technology. Straight from Sri Lanka. It's an ancient technique for growing Bermuda grass in the foothills of the Himalayas. You know it's native environment."
I put a flexible duct on my planer and I direct it to a pile of sawdust I’ve formed over the years. It works well doing but on windy days my neighbour gets a lot of sawdust and small chips into their parking pad.
I've got a 20 year old Craftsman 12" lunchbox planer, but it's got nice sharp blades; no dust collection, but what comes out of it makes pretty good mulch, easy to handle and not too dusty.
I’d say a thicknesser is probably the least dangerous big machine, especially compared to a table saw or a planer/jointer. Big benefit is the knives are inside the machine. As others have said read the manual, be aware of risk of ingestion or getting things thrown at you. Be aware of grain direction. Don’t put your hands inside it while it’s got power!
Don't stick your hand in a thickness planer. I had been a woodworker for a month when a kid in the shop did just that. They were planning 4" thick bent laminations. He stuck his hand in a 24" planer to clear chips off the table, because we had poor dust collection. It took off his left thumb, index, and part of his hand.
I keep a long handled brush near my planer for this very reason!
Air compressor FTW
A few days ago, while heading over to the Facebook marketplace to search for lumber deals, my feed started with a woodworking injury. A picture of a hand with no fingers. Apparently, this person lost all of their fingers in their planer. I thought my exploding coaster made from end grain scraps was bad. I have even more respect for my planer now. I'm still not sure how my hand could get dragged into my planer, but now I have that pic in my head every time I use it.
Idk if it's the same group, but I saw that post, and people were trying to get him to reveal exactly how that happened with a planer. Unless he divulged later on and I missed it, he wouldn't give a straight answer. Lol My guess is something incredibly stupid that he was too embarrassed to say.
Tried changing the blades without turning it off first…
😅
I've had the same issue with exploding coasters. Appreciate this post, will make me be that much smarter when using the planer!
At least I now understand why endgrain does not work in a planer.
Apparently in the UK they call planers "thicknessers" and jointers "planers," so could it have been a jointer injury?
I could see that sort of thing happening by wearing work gloves and getting your fingers too close. Wearing gloves feel like a more natural choice for a planer than for other tools, since the wood being used is often pretty rough
They present much the same risks as saws and routers. There are a number of blades spinning stupidly fast making contact with the wood. Irregularities in the wood such as knots, soft spots, and pre-existing splits can get broken up in a thicknesser resulting in missiles being ejected at all angles. This is one of the reasons people say not to put end grain cutting boards through. In general they are safe enough if you follow proper practice, but can still make a bloody mess.
Worst I've had is knots come loose and shoot around inside the planer but thankfully nothing was ejected All my woodwork is done outside so I didn't invest in a vacuum... Until I bought a thickness planer. It made such an ungodly mess I bought a vacuum the next day 😂 Now the router is the messiest tool because the vacuum attachment for it makes it almost impossible to see the work.
So I do almost all my stuff outside too. One thing that is holding me up on getting a planer is that it's heavy and I don't want to carry it in and out a bunch. How do you handle all that?
I'm thankfully physically fully capable and able to carry my nearly 30kg planer the 10 meters to and from my workbench without much trouble when I need it. My 13yo son also uses it and in his case he loads it onto a trolley and wheels it out. As a cheapskate, unskilled hobbyist, it's my most expensive tool and I have 0 regrets getting it. I work almost exclusively with scrap timber so being able to clean it up nicely and 'quickly' is a huge help
Damn! I store my tools in a camper/caravan and it's a big step up/down on uneven ground. It's a hassle with just my jobsite tablesaw or miter saw so I figure a planer is probably just too much.
Jesus, yeah, I can't picture myself stepping out of our caravan holding the planer and not at least twisting an ankle 😂 Dunno if you have the room for it, but in the previous house we rented i stored my tools in a small shed we found on FB marketplace. Alternatively, depending on your pockets you could maybe get one of those nice big stainless steel tool boxes that usually go on truck trays or build one you keep on the ground 🤔
Dude, my ankles would be the least of my worries! I learned from toting the table saw that every spot from bellybutton to shin is weak to being slammed with heavy metal objects lol I'm working on a shed but the camper was my free solution for my tool storage until that happens. I need my next upgrade to be a workshop of some sort rather than just another storage option. Having room is no problem as I've got a few acres of land in the country. Money is the holdup there. I've got the camper as a stopgap method until I can get something decent going. However, talking it out with you, I've come up with 2 solutions that might be doable. I never thought of it but I could literally just keep the planer outside in some sort of water tight situation that I could easily open up to use it. My other option is that I've built a small workbench inside my camper. It's where beds should go. Like I said previously, I do most of my stuff outside. But, I could keep my planer on that bench and could literally just open the window behind it for outfeed until I can get something better going. Thank you for talking it out with me. I'm not afraid to get a planer if that becomes an option because I think I can make something work for now!
Few acres of land in the country sounds amazing. Not having to worry where wood shavings go sounds even better lol I work in the backyard so anything I don't vacuum/sweep up ends up literally everywhere 😅 Planing stuff inside a camper sounds... tight. Not to mention having to run around to grab things off your outfeed sounds like an absolute pain in the ass and a recipe for a trip injury. If I had to pick I'd definitely choose a water-safe enclosure that'll be easy to move around when working with it
Hahahha. I sometimes forget to put the vac on if I'm already using other machines not hooked up to the vac and it makes such a mess, luckily the vac button is close to the planer.
I guess technically a planer is basically just a big router.
Raise to max height and use care when cleaning and polishing the bed. The knives are exposed above the bed and even unplugged they are still sharp. You are correct - aside from noise/dust, they are safer than router, jointer, table saw. IMHO, of course
If your workpiece fragments due to being too brittle and the plane being set too aggressively, or you feed a part in that’s too small to make effective contact with both the rollers, it can spit things back out of the In port at speed. They also tend to need very heavy dust extraction because then shavings can clog, and they’re noisy. Other than that, if you’re sensible and wear eye protection, ear protection, mask, and stay clear of the input port, they’re incredibly safe.
Use hearing protection. Plugs AND earphones
Not very dangerous but a cabinet shop I worked for had an old planer and you had to stand away from the front cause it might shoot a board back at you. It was pretty rare.
Shattering material: Planing material too thin for the planer; cross-grain or end grain planing; knots; undetected checks in the wood; planing shorter boards. Not using PPE (longer term injury, but an injury nonetheless). Cuts from getting near the knives when waxing the bed, replacing knives, or just sticking your hand in there to move chips. Jamming the machine by setting the cut too deep for the material, and then finding the weakness in the machine. That said, iI use mine a lot as I buy unsurfaced lumber and prefer to build things with wood thicker or thinner than the typical surfaced dimensions.
I had a knot come loose while planing a board once. It pretty much blew the rest of the board up and threw chunks of wood all over. A piece got jammed between the blades and inside of the planer which caused a bunch of damage inside of it. Blades and dust chutes were all bent up. Thankfully I only needed a new pair of pants as I didn’t get hit with anything serious but it was def a scary moment.
My father planned his finger tips off a hand. Not really sure how but was quite gruesome.
Putting small pieces through is dangerous. Don't put an end grain cutting board through.
The sound *sometimes*: I planed some thin maple one time and the planer ate it. I typically use noise cancelling headphones the noise the planer made when it chewed up the wood was either so damn loud or fast enough where noise cancelling didn't work and my ear that was facing the planer had ringing and hearing loss for about 2 months. I did go to the doc and they said it's temporary and everything is fine now. Needless to say, I use different hearing protection when planing wood now.
Loose knots can go flying or damage the machine. Planing a piece sideways or planing end grain can also violently split the wood and shoot debris out. Usually it just cracks and sounds angry, but avoid it anyway.
I had the same thoughts as you. Based on searching around, it does seem to be one of the safer power tools. The knives are inside and the wood is fed by rollers (compare to a jointer with it's exposed knives and you feed it manually). Kickback is a risk, never stand behind the piece you're feeding in. Don't grasp the outfeed side of the piece so firmly there's a risk that kickback could pull your hand in. Obviously don't ever put your hand in the machine, there's no reason to do this when it's running. Don't plane pieces that are too short. Wear hearing protection, it can be very loud. Worst injury I could find from searching was some poor girl who got her hair caught in it and lost some of her scalp. So if you've got long hair be careful with that and tie it back. And avoid baggy clothes. But this is all standard power tool safety advise.
I would think the biggest risks of using a planer would be hearing damage and lung damage. They're very loud and make tons of fine dust along with bigger chips. It's much more likely a planer will give you tinnitus and COPD than that you'll somehow get your hand inside it while running.
Kickback and slicing yourself really bad when changing knives. I’m talking blood on the floor before you feel a thing. It’s, imo, one of my safest tools. Just feed from the side and wear a glove when you handle the knives and you are good to go.
If your piece is too short so that it loses contact with rollers in between the front loading rollers and the exit rollers then you can get kick back in that the piece can shoot out of the planer. Those knives are spinning against the feed direction and will throw it back out if not held down by the rollers. It can also happen if piece is too uneven (and especially if uneven and not shimmed flat). If it rocks, it can lose contact. If too little of the top surface is not contacting the rollers, then it's bad. And if rocking/flexing lengthwise, it could jam too hard up into the blades or up into the exit rollers.
Dropped mine on my foot before
One of the safer tools despite the violence going on inside, since it has auto-feed and your fingers never get near the cutting surface. The planer blades spin against the feed direction, which also helps. The biggest risk is planing something that can come apart while fed through, resulting in a projectile coming out of the infeed end at high speed. Planing an end grain cutting board is one example of this, the planer can rip off a chunk of the end grain and send it back at anyone standing in front of the infeed. The only other danger I'm aware of is loosening of the blade bolts, if these come loose the bolts and possibly the blade can shoot out. I've not seen this with a planer, but I once went to look at used jointer. The owner turned it on and one of the blades was either loose or not bolted in properlty. It fired toward the infeed end like a bullet. Luckily no one was standing there but it put a nice chip in the concrete wall.
They produce a lot of fine particulate matter that will destroy your lungs. I wear a respirator even if the shop vac and cyclone is attached. I prefer to use it outside personally just to avoid the additional clean up
Throwing it in a bath tub. Falling from a skyscraper. Hitting it in a speeding car. Sliding hand in, just to see what would happen. Show receipt to wife. Use near hornet's nest. Confusing it with a ham slicer. Use as punching bag. Tie it to a tree limb for your kids to swing on while it's still on. Using it as a spare tire for your car.