Planer - Sander combo, good idea or not?

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phavriluk
Posts: 554
Joined: Mon Jul 09, 2012 9:49 pm

Re: Planer - Sander combo, good idea or not?

Post by phavriluk »

I've made a bunch of lutherie-specific tools, rosette cutter, Fox bender, digital heat blanket controller, plate joiner. Saved a bunch of cash, spent a lot of time doing it. If time spent enters the discussion about build/buy, if cash is available, I'd say 'buy'. I had quite a delay building guitars while I was building tools.
peter havriluk
banjopicks
Posts: 56
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2019 4:37 pm

Re: Planer - Sander combo, good idea or not?

Post by banjopicks »

I have a cheap 14" band saw and a great 19x38 drum sander. I don't miss my planer at all.
ruby@magpage.com
Posts: 1564
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:03 am
Location: Chestertown Maryland

Re: Planer - Sander combo, good idea or not?

Post by ruby@magpage.com »

You don't really need a planer (surface planer?) for guitar work. If you can re-saw boards for backs, tops and sides, then they just need sanding. I build 1 to 1-1/2 a year and my local cabinetmaker friend charges me $20 to put everything through his 4 foot wide, 20 HP, 3hp belt feed motor tool. Funny to watch ukulele sides at .055 going through this enormous machine.

For the last 15 years I have helped perhaps 12 friends and acquaintances liquidate their shops. The single tool that is the hardest to sell is the ShopSmith, that funky tool that is a lathe, bandsaw, table saw, jigsaw, and everything else you are foolish enough to buy the attachment for. We have had to give them away for $100 at times, because they do everything OK but nothing really well.

As has been said, buy good tools, or maybe rent someone else's time on their machine if you don't build a lot.

Ed
Ed M
MaineGeezer
Posts: 1711
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2014 12:14 pm

Re: Planer - Sander combo, good idea or not?

Post by MaineGeezer »

See viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7772&p=42396&hilit=thickness+sander#p42396

If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them. Yes, it's my own design, assisted with a liberal amount of idea theft from other plans I found online. My old engineering prof would occasionally say, "robbery was man' s first labor-saving device."

My original hobby interest was machine shop stuff, building model steam engines from castings and such, so I had the equipment (lathe and milling machine) and skillset to build the thickness sander.
Don't believe everything you know.
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When things are bad, try not to make them any worse, because it is quite likely they are bad enough already. - French Foreign Legion
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