I have dove into the rabbit hole and am getting deeper and deeper into woodworking, I started turning on a lathe--my buddy says we should buy a jointer as our next tool since we are wanting to make laminated blocks and such for turning, so that would be an important tool for us to have....so I think I want an 8" jointer, and am wondering it it's important to step up to a parallelogram style one? I'm looking at the Laguna 8 inch shear tech II but to step up to the parallelogram version the price jumps up to 3k, I was wanting to keep the budget under 2K if that's doable to get what is considered a good 8" model.
Any advice/input is welcome.
For your intended use a jointer really isn't what you need. A jointer has two purposes:
- to straighten one edge of a board ... and
- to flatten one face of a board that is cupped, bowed, or twisted
If you are thinking of creating thin stock with two parallel faces, you will be very disappointed to find that a jointer can't do that. A jointer can flatten both faces of a board, but rest assured that they won't be parallel.
If you intend to do any flat woodworking, then a jointer and a planer are two machines that work very well together. You can flatten one face of a board and straighten one edge on the jointer and then use the planer to mill the other face parallel to the one that was flattened on the jointer.
You could also consider a bandsaw to cut thin boards ... known as resawing.
A jointer-only option is to flatten one face of a board on the jointer and then flatten the other face parallel to the first on the lathe.
Another way to flatten a board is with a wide thickness sander, but it is a very dusty machine.
It might be best to hold off buying a jointer. If woodturning is your main interest, there are several other machines that would be more useful. If flat woodworking is your main interest, you will eventually want a jointer, but I would rate several other machines more useful, for instance bandsaw, tablesaw, drill press, belt sander, and planer.