Woodworking Machines – Popular Types and Their Uses

Woodworking is an ancient art of carving and processing wood to create a variety of products. It is in the historical records that the ancient Egyptian and Chinese civilizations used different types of hand tools to craft wonderful wooden items. The art continues even today and a huge range of woodworking machines have been discovered during the course of time.

Wood processing tools and machines are used to process different types of wood, including softwood, teakwood, rosewood, basswood, kingwood and oakwood. From cutting wood into pieces to design beautiful intricate patterns on timber, these machines save a lot of human efforts and produce great outputs. Here are some of the most preferred woodworking tools, along with their uses.

Machines for Hobbyists and Artists

Woodworking has emerged as an exciting hobby around the world. There are many renowned woodworkers who have contributed towards wooden carvings, sculptures and show pieces. There are many woodworking machines that are specifically designed for hobbyists and artists. These include chain saw, jig saw, electric drill, router, nail gun, wood lathe, panel saw and mortiser among many others. 

Commercial Woodworking

Wood in different varieties is processed for the purposes like making furniture, doors, windows, cupboards, cabinets and a variety of panel products. For this, the most commonly used woodworking machines include tenoners, boring machines, edge processing machines and CNC routers in addition to the machines mentioned in the previous section.

Here are the main uses of some of these machines:

• Planers – Flatten the wood surface to obtain desired thickness.

• Jointers – Flatten the bottom and edges of the wooden boards.

• Table saws – Ripping and crosscutting the wood according to the wood grains.

• Chisels – Cut and carve timber

• Routers – Cut a variety of patterns and designs in timber

• Morticers – Make square and rectangular holes in wood

These machines can also be classified as cutting tools like saws; shaping tools like chisels and lathes; assembly tools like hammer and screw driver and finishing tools like scrapers. A lot of safety is required while using these woodworking machines. High quality machines designed using industry standards should be preferred for better results.