Firstly I will say I am new here and a new Woodworker. I have started my woodworking by making some simple tables to learn some basic joinery. My question is how is the best way to smooth the surface of a table top(or any sort of panel) that is made up from a number of edge glued boards? I typically glue together 4-6 boards to make a table top of say 12-18″ wide. At the moment I take the glued tabletop to work and pop it through our 48″ wide Timesaver sander a couple of times, job done. I would like to be able to do the same thing at home. Can anyone suggest my best route for doing this? I have seen small portable planers but they get expensive for any width over 12″, I have also seen smaller drum sanders which you can pass up to 36″ wide panels through(in 2 passes). Finally I figure there is the hand plane/cabinet scraper/scraper route which is unlimited but requires more skill than I possess.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to best tackle this? Thanks for any comments and I am really enjoying reading the discussions here, invaluable for someone just starting out.
Replies
Just a thought--don't surrender! The handplane route is not as hard as you might think; a 36" x 72" table top should take a couple of hours at the outside, and the money you would spend on a special-purpose drum sander will buy you a small but complete set of world-class planes.
I might go with a drum sander if I was working commercially or hated handplanes, but it is an excellent way accomplish the job and to get some hand tool skills at the same time....
/jvs
If you plan on a drum sander you will need dust colection to go with it, All that I have seen won't work without it. This adds expence and space ossues, so you may want to check this out well if you don' do it alot
Care in prepping your wood, facing on the jointer, planig over size and letting the wood acclimate then finish facing and planing along with glue-ups with curved cauls will yield a panel that need very little sanding with a belt/ROS or light hand plane/scraper work. The curved cauls insure perfect registration of your boards during glue-ups. I've glued 4' x 8' panels myself with minimal clean up. I never use bisquits or dowels either...extra step that only takes time with no benefit.
my thoughts are to put your $s into something more immediately useful. You seem to have ready access to a wide sander already. As others have suggested, your own thickness sander will require dust collection adding to the cost.
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