The router is a power tool with a flat base and a rotating blade extending past the base. The spindle may be driven by an electric motor or by a pneumatic motor. It routs an area in hard material, such as wood or plastic. Routers are used most often in woodworking, especially cabinetry. They may be handheld or affixed to router tables. Some woodworkers consider the router one of the most versatile power tools.
Joinery is a part of woodworking that involves joining pieces of wood, engineered lumber, or synthetic substitutes, to produce more complex items. Some woodworking joints employ mechanical fasteners, bindings, or adhesives, while others use only wood elements.
In machining, a shaper is a type of machine tool that uses linear relative motion between the workpiece and a single-point cutting tool to machine a linear toolpath. Its cut is analogous to that of a lathe, except that it is (archetypally) linear instead of helical.
The scrub plane is a type of plane used to remove large amounts of wood from the surface of lumber, such as when eliminating cup or twist in the first stages of preparing rough stock, or when reducing the thickness of a board significantly. Scrub planes generally have a short sole, a relatively narrow but thick blade, a very wide mouth, and a deeply curved edge to make a deep, gouging cut.
A hand plane is a tool for shaping wood using muscle power to force the cutting blade over the wood surface. Some rotary power planers are motorized power tools used for the same types of larger tasks, but are unsuitable for fine-scale planing, where a miniature hand plane is used.
A biscuit joiner or biscuit jointer is a woodworking tool used to join two pieces of wood together. A biscuit joiner uses a small circular saw blade to cut a crescent-shaped hole in the opposite edges of two pieces of wood or wood composite panels. An oval-shaped, highly dried and compressed wooden biscuit is covered with glue, or glue is applied in the slot. The biscuit is immediately placed in the slot, and the two boards are clamped together. The wet glue expands the biscuit, further improving the bond.
A miter saw or mitre saw is a saw used to make accurate crosscuts and miters in a workpiece by positioning a mounted blade onto a board. A miter saw in its earliest form was composed of a back saw in a miter box, but in modern implementation consists of a powered circular saw that can be positioned at a variety of angles and lowered onto a board positioned against a backstop called the fence.
The phrase speeds and feeds or feeds and speeds refers to two separate velocities in machine tool practice, cutting speed and feed rate. They are often considered as a pair because of their combined effect on the cutting process. Each, however, can also be considered and analyzed in its own right.
A wood shaper, is a stationary woodworking machine in which a vertically oriented spindle drives one or more stacked cutter heads to mill profiles on wood stock.
A sander is a power tool used to smooth surfaces by abrasion with sandpaper. Sanders have a means to attach the sandpaper and a mechanism to move it rapidly contained within a housing with means to hand-hold it or fix it to a workbench. Woodworking sanders are usually powered electrically, and those used in auto-body repair work by compressed air. There are many different types of sanders for different purposes. Multi-purpose power tools and electric drills may have sander attachments.
A jointer or in some configurations, a jointer-planer is a woodworking machine used to produce a flat surface along a board's length. As a jointer, the machine operates on the narrow edge of boards, preparing them for use as butt joint or gluing into panels. A planer-jointer setup has the width that enables smoothing ('surface planing') and leveling the faces (widths) of boards small enough to fit the tables.
The term planer may refer to several types of carpentry tools, woodworking machines or metalworking machine tools.
A combination machine is a woodworking machine that combines the functions of two or more separate machines into a single unit. For example, a combination machine might consist of a tablesaw with a side-mounted jointer. Another common example of this type of machine is the jointer-thicknesser which combines the function of a jointer with that of a planer.
A shooting board or shootboard is a jig for woodworking which is used in combination with a hand plane to trim and square up the edges and ends of boards. It is typically used on a workbench. A plank or board with edges planed flat is called a shot edge board.
A butt joint is a wood joint in which the end of a piece of material is simply placed against another piece. The butt joint is the simplest joint. An unreinforced butt joint is also the weakest joint, as it provides a limited surface area for gluing and lacks any mechanical interlocking to resist external forces.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Facing in machining can be used in two different areas: facing on a milling machine and facing on a lathe. Facing on the milling machine involves various milling operations, but primarily face milling. On the lathe, facing is commonly used in turning and boring operations. Other operations remove material in ways similar to facing, for example, planing, shaping, and grinding, but these processes are not labeled by the term "facing."
Snipe, in woodworking, is a noticeably deeper cut on the leading and/or trailing end of a board after having passed through a thickness planer or jointer. Its cause, in a jointer, is an out-feed table which is set too low relative to the cutter head, or in a thickness planer, an unnecessarily high setting of the Bed rollers of the in-feed table or a pressure bar which is set too high. The term has its origin in forestry where it is applied to a sloping surface or bevel cut on the fore end of a log to ease dragging. (OED)
Milling is the process of machining using rotary cutters to remove material by advancing a cutter into a workpiece. This may be done by varying directions on one or several axes, cutter head speed, and pressure. Milling covers a wide variety of different operations and machines, on scales from small individual parts to large, heavy-duty gang milling operations. It is one of the most commonly used processes for machining custom parts to precise tolerances.
Flat sawing, flitch sawing or plain sawing is a woodworking process that produces flat-cut or plain-cut boards of lumber.
