I recently acquired some 5/4 black walnut 18″ x 10 feet planed hit and miss on one side. Being too wide for my planer and getting lazy in my old age (83) , I decided to send it out to a local wood shop to abrasive sand on one side. It came back nice and smooth and flat—but it was almost completly covered with small scratches -some even deep enough to feel with a finger nail.
My analysis is that that the scratches from came from deep scratches from 60 or 80 grit belts. Subsequent passes with 100 and 120/150 belts were not enough to remove the scratches. Obviously the scratches had to be removed before finishing and it took a couple hours using a P/C finishing sander.
My question is this. Is this a typical result from abrasive planers? Operator error or equipment shortcoming? If so I would suggest using a knife planer and deal with any tear out. I like the idea of avoiding tear out but not at the expense of unsuitable scratches.
Lee2
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I recently purchased the performax 10-20 drum sander, and after a few projects, I have found that a couple of light passes at the end with the 120 grit paper gives a pretty good result with only minimal orbital sanding neededafterwards. Light is the key here...and a slower feed rate helps too. A thickness planer is fine for bland woods, but once you have used a drum sander on 1/4 sawn or highly figured woods, you'll never use the planer again. Tearout runs deep....scratches are shallow.
Lee2 ,
Abrasive planing and wide belt sanding reduce , but do not eliminate sanding . The in line scratches are a common scenario and not a result of operator error. Progressive finer grits will make finer scratches .
good luck dusty
Old dusty: Thanks for the imput.I guess I just expected too much. Lee2
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