The Three Pillars of Milling: Why You Need More Than One Machine

When you’re knee-deep in a shop build—maybe tackling a run of custom kitchen cabinets or prepping a massive live edge slab—it’s easy to get tunnel vision. You see the end result: a perfectly flat, square, dimensioned piece of oak or walnut. You look at the pile of lumber, and you think, “Surely, I can just… make it flat enough.”

But here’s the truth that separates the hobbyist from the professional woodworker: simply running a board through one machine is almost never enough. If you want true flatness, true squareness, and true parallelism—the kind of precision needed for joinery that won't fail—you need a process, and that process usually involves three machines working in concert.

Some folks, when faced with the cost and complexity of the shop setup, ask, “Is this whole process overkill? Can’t I just get by with one or two tools?” The answer is complicated, but if you’re doing any serious milling, you’re going to need the full setup. Let’s talk about why.

The Three-Step Formula for Perfection

The goal is simple: take a rough board and turn it into a piece of material that is dimensionally stable and perfectly square. You can’t do it in one pass. You have to build the dimension sequentially, using each machine for a specific, critical job.

Think of it as a system of checks and balances. The jointer, the thickness planer, and the table saw each solve a distinct problem, and skipping any one of them leaves you with corners that are slightly off, edges that are bowed, or faces that are merely flat, but not truly straight or square to the adjacent surface.

Step 1: Flattening and Straightening with the Jointer

The jointer is your foundation. Its job is to create one face that is perfectly flat and one edge that is perfectly straight. If you need a board to be square, you start here. You are establishing your reference surface. This machine can’t make two surfaces parallel to each other, but it can make one face flat and one edge true.

Step 2: Achieving Parallelism with the Planer

Once the jointer has given you a flat face and a straight edge, you run the board through the thickness planer. The planer’s sole purpose is to bring the second face parallel to the first face (the jointered face). By running it through, you are ensuring that the board is dimensionally consistent across its width, making the second face square to the first. This is the step that moves you from merely 'flat' to 'dimensioned.'

Step 3: Cutting the Final Edge

The final pass is the table saw. You run the board through the table saw, making the final edge parallel to the edge you established on the jointer. The table saw gives you the final, accurate dimension and ensures that all three surfaces—the two faces and the final edge—are square to one another. You now have four flat, straight, square sides. Congratulations, you’ve successfully milled lumber.

When Can You Skip Steps?

Now, let’s talk about the exceptions. If you are working on small projects—say, a small set of decorative trim pieces or a few drawer components—you might be able to skip the jointer entirely, using sleds or adjustable wedges with a planer or router to get close enough. But if you are milling more than a handful of boards, especially for high-stakes joinery like cabinet frames or built-in casework, relying on a shortcut is asking for failure. The three-machine process, while it seems like a lot of equipment, is actually the most reliable, fastest way to guarantee professional results.

The difference between spending time learning the proper milling process and spending time fixing joints that fail down the line is the difference between a good piece of furniture and a piece of scrap wood. Invest in the knowledge, and invest in the tools.

Want to see this process in action or learn more about building out your own custom shop? Check out a local wood shop class, or find a Carpenter Angel near you who can walk you through the process.