Reply by Holbs

Pint hit the difference on the head. Some months ago, I too was searching for the difference between a planer and a jointer; there was not much sense as to the separating ways between the two. A jointer has the ability of the infeed table that can be lowered in small increments (1/16, 1/8, etc) from the outfeed table with the cutter blades on the bottom making a flat bottom; a planer does not. In addition, the jointer has a 90degree fence; the planer does not. End result is the jointer can quickly give you a perfect 90degree angle between the bottom of the board and it’s side. This would be your reference point for the next step, the planer since it has a fixed co-planar infeed and outfeed table or others use table saw / router. Since the bottom of the board is perfectly flat, the planer with the cutter heads on top cut into the wood equi-distant from the bottom of the board.

It mostly made sense to me but i was still a little hazed at the difference. So, I just went out and bought a planer first. I was going to use a router or table saw instead of a jointer. but a week after buying a planer, a sweet little jointer came up on an auction so now i have both.

Jointer and Planer should be a sticky at top of forums as it seems which to buy first, how to use router/table saw instead of jointer… seems nearly the first question someone asks.

of course, the original poster posted this 820days ago :) wonder which route he went.