Maybe you just need a little help sorting things out to get up to speed with the process?
This is a true statement.
Short history, was giving some rough cut cedar, beautiful wood very few knots. Neighbor had a planer, said he would plane it down for me free. When I got it back half of the thickness was gone and none of it was the same thickness. Lesson learned.
Bought a lunchbox planer, bought some rough cut cypress, I am good to go right? Negative, cypress too much for the lunchbox, unless I was willing to run each board through 20 times, another negative. Took that to a local wood shop and pleaded for the use of the planer and jointer. Afterwards and about 100 bucks later I had some workable cypress.
So I figured I needed a bigger planer and jointer, bought an antique delta planer that weighs 200 lbs, replaced the blades, belts and changed the oil in it ( yes it has oil in the gearbox) and thought, heck I am in business. Negative, cypress is tougher than I thought. Maybe only have to run it through 10 times per board.
So I figured well might as well buy a jointer, found a 4 inch Rockwell in CL. Replaced the blades, bearings and pulley. So I am ready to joint some stuff right? Another big fat negative, have not figured out why it will not produce a flat edge. Still studying on it though.
Well what is a wood working shop with out a table saw? CL provided the answer with a Craftsman 10 inch contractor saw. After the smoke escaped from the motor, and you know it has to have smoke on the inside not the outside, rebuilt motor was the next item on the list. Okay motor fixed, now lets get down to business, new saw blade, motor, belt. Hey this thing won't cut a straight line for nothing. Okay let's work on the fence, sheesh, tighten the fence, check it against the blade, everything looks good. Let's cut 3 pcs and see if the are the same width. Negative, but I figured heck just use it and do the best you can.
Brother works for a company that buys old buildings, so I figured hey, how about some of that old thick pine you got laying around bro. Sure he says here is a few 2x6's. Now when I say 2x6 I mean it. So I think this is a good plan for my planer and table saw. Free wood, old wood, real wood! He said all the nails were out, join me in saying negative ghost rider. Well there went my favorite Freud saw blade. And I learned old pine is hard and brittle.
So after much consideration a lot of sawdust, and very little usable wood to work with. Maybe I should pay more up front for nice stuff.
I dont say all of this to be crying the blues, actually it is a bit amusing to me. I like woodworking I really do, wish my projects would come out like I plan.
But I will not be defeated by a mere piece of wood, I don't think I will be defeated, at this point it is still undecided who will be victorious.
Reading the above, I really get the feeling that you and your neighbor or friends need to 1) become better educated in tool use and setup and 2) to better familiarize oneself and research new tool purchases. Fortunately, this site is a great source to help you address both of those issues as the knowledge is freely available just for the asking.
For your neighbor to have gotten different thicknesses on each board would suggest that he was resetting the height after running each individual board through and not taking care to either setup a proper final stop to gauge final finish height or ensured that the final pass for all the boards were made without resetting the planer height between each board (in other words, run all the boards through together without any height changes between individual boards). This would suggest he was not terribly familiar with milling lumber. Similarly, unless the boards were terribly twisted, cupped, or bowed, then there was no need to remove half the thickness unless that was the desired final thickness. However, to properly mill lumber one needs more than just a thickness planer as the first two reference surfaces (one edge and one face) are created on a Jointer, then the jointed boards are fed through the planer for final thicknessing.
A decent lunchbox planer should be able to handle cypress and cedar just fine -- any issues will typically relate to setup, dull blades, or an inadequately sized extension cord, any of which can starve a planer of the power it needs to get the job done. I have regularly run Purpleheart, hard Maple, and other very hard woods through my benchtop planer without any difficulty, and these are harder woods than most cedar and cypress species. Depending upon board width, wood hardness, and feed speed most benchtop planer's will remove anywhere from 1/32" to 1/8" in a single pass, with 1/16" being pretty typical. You can be even more aggressive with a large stationary planer if it is equipped with a typical 2-5HP induction motor (though 200 lbs. is rather lightweight for a stationary planer as some benchtop portable planer's are close to 100 lbs. themselves).
I do not know whether your tablesaw was really a contractor or a job site tablesaw as the two terms often get misused in conversation, but in general a true contractor tablesaw is very heavy (usually several hundred pounds) and simply a slightly more compact version of a cabinet saw whereas a job site saw is built to be lightweight (typically under 100 lbs.) and highly portable with lightweight stands. Neither is as stable or accurate as a proper stationary cabinet tablesaw, but a good contractor tablesaw can often come close if properly setup and equipped with a good quality fence and rails whereas job site tablesaws, due to their compact size and lightweight construction, leave much to be desired in terms of accuracy. I suspect you likely have one of the much more common job site tablesaws (especially if you were able to burn up the motor, which is more likely with a universal motor than the induction motor found in contractor tablesaws), but if it is really a contractor tablesaw then, provided the fence and rails are good quality and in good condition, you should be able to get the tablesaw setup to cut straight and consistently. If the blade is not parallel to the miter slots, a common issue if the tablesaw was knocked about or improperly setup, then the first thing you will need to correct is that alignment as everything depends upon that alignment being correct, but that can be an involved process with both contractor and job site tablesaws as the trunnion is attached to the underside of the table which complicates the adjustment of such.
You will find a 4" jointer to be a very limited tool due to the narrow width it is capable of face jointing and the very short tables. Initial setup is very critical for a jointer if it is to do its job as they are used to create a perfectly flat face prior to thickness planing and to establish the initial reference edge at a perfect 90-degrees relative to that flattened face. Setting up a jointer is not necessarily difficult but it can be time consuming and requires patience. You can find
a guide on setting up jointers in our Articles section.
As already mentioned, free and reclaimed lumber is always a gamble and if you wish to work with such you really need to invest in a proper metal detection wand as you can almost bet on the certainty of buried metal residing in at least some of the boards and those nails can do considerable harm to your knives, blades, and cutting edges as well as create potential kickback conditions, which can be dangerous. Always scan such repeatedly for nails , both sides, while resting on a table or workbench with no nearby metal in its construction so that you may use the wand at maximum sensitivity, prior to running the board through any of your equipment. But most importantly, never look upon it as free wood as it can become quite expensive when cutters and blades are destroyed and used wood often has a lot of embedded dirt and grit that can aggressively wear your cutting edges
much faster than new wood. Use reclaimed wood because you like the look and character or are big on recycling, not because it is free as it is not free by the time you finish milling it!
So please do not give up on milling your own lumber if that is important to you as you now have access to a great wealth of knowledge and teachers to help you get things right. You are no longer on your own to figure all of this out for yourself.
Best wishes!