These days in many North American areas used jointers and planers are abundant. The lunchbox planers can be had for about $100 used and the decent-quality 6″ jointers can be had for about the same.

Serious surfacing of rough wood will tear-up lunchbox planers in my experience… they are really disposable tools with too many fragile parts compared to a real, all metal planer. The lunchbox planers also tend to give a nicer finish and some control sniping better than some heavy-duty light industrial planers.

The jointer, much as I love having one, is an over-rated tool. It is not so hard to flatten a board with a jack plane (or bigger). Doing it often will make you fit as well. But thicknessing boards by hand is a hella lot more work than flattening one side. Thus, you can flatten one side, and run that side down in the planer to surface the opposite side to flat. The truth is you can do a pretty vague flattening job with side A and still end up with a flat board when you are done.

Add to that, a jointer, if you try to flatten all your boards with it, will eat up a lot of usable stock. Hand planes are a much more flexible tool. With a jointer you’ll be tempted to try to tune the board flat every which way – with planes you’ll put your attention on the corners and problem areas, where they belong, and not remove more stock than is needed because you’ll just be making more work for yourself.

Regarding the edge-jointing capacity of a jointer: I admit it can do a good job with edges, but even a jointer is a tool that requires skill unless you have an enormous automated one with an 8 foot bed and a power feeder.

These days you can rip a pretty nice joint with a handheld saw and a straight edge and fix it clean with a router or a hand-plane. The router and hand-held circular saw really make the stationary jointer partially obsolete.

While I never made much practice of jointing plywood to remove saw marks when making cabinets, some people do and it really wrecks the jointer knives. Considering plywood cabinet sides are generally under 3 feet on an edge, the jointer is a quick and easy tool to do this with.

Crappy hand tools are bad – as a friend and I found out while taking part of the Fine Furniture making course at Rosewood Studios in Almonte, Ontario. He had a combination square that turned out not to be and it was a mid-priced brand (Not a Starrett, like the school was using for instance, which is a bit pricey but an excellent tool).

You’ll pay a fair bit if you want good planes, scrapers, draw knives, chisels, and so forth, but they are worth every penny. To be able to prepare boards for finish without touching a sander or sandpaper is amazing, as one example.

I will also point out that you may have to or want to finish lumber with your hand tools, but taking a crooked, bowed, and twisted rough-sawn board to six-way square with a hand plane is a labour of love and time. Using a planer or jointer to get it there fast (and then a plane to get the finish beautiful) is much faster. So one can still see value in power tools.

Find places like Rosewood, take a course from a fantastic teacher who knows hand tools thoroughly, and buy some good ones – you’ll be amazed at the things you can do and how beautiful they en up being. Just expect them to take a bit longer to finish.