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Is it a good idea to thickness with a hand held power-sander?

They're obvsiouly much cheaper that buying a thicknesser and can be useful for other jobs

Thanks.

I would think uniformity to be the issue. However, back in the day it was done with planes and scraping. But a thickness sander is so much faster and no buzzing hands. Look on line regarding the Safe-T Planer. Also, there are some web pages describing how to thickness with a router.

Nice Name =)

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Jim Hansen

I used a 3x18 handheld belt sander to thickness three of my four guitars. It works, but it's obviously not as good as a thickness sander. The trick is to keep it moving; you don't want gouges in your wood. Uniformity isn't too difficult to achieve, once you've had some practice.

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Phillip Patton

http://www.pattonblades.com

The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of low price has faded.

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I do it. I would much rather have a thickness sander, but like you, they are a bit spendy for me at this time.

To save yourself some time, you can buy those metal sanding discs at an Ace Hardware. They arent needed for a soundboard, but those hardwoods can take all day to sand down with 80 grit.

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-Marcus
http://www.bailieguitars.com
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Before I got my Performax 10-20, I worked a couple tops using Planes, and finished off with my ROS. Seemed to work great ... just that the performax is much faster

Glenn

I used to do joined tops this way long ago with my Porter cable palm sander (A belt sander is WAY too aggressive for spruce).
Using a soft carpenter's pencil, mark the entire surface with cross hatching pressing just hard enough to slightly indent the marks. Sand away (80 grit) until the marks are gone and repeat.
Stick to 80 grit, anything coarser than 80 grit will shed bits of abrasive that will embed themselves into the soft surface of the spruce marring it.

This works fine. The only drawback is that it takes time and you must be careful to sand evenly to the point that you then may want to thin certain areas additionally.

I suffer from arthritis so I find it hard to hand plane hardwoods (plus getting old). I use a hand held Bosch electric planer to take down the bulk of the wood from the usual 4 to 5mm to just over 3mm and then take down to final thickness on my home built thicknesser/sander.
Yes this can be scary with a hand held power planer if your not careful. I set it to 0.5mm for each pass. It saves me a lot work, however I wouldn't recommend it to the inexperienced.

Bill S.

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