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I read some stuff about planing and that with thinner wood and figured wood it's best to thickness sand. However all the thickness sanders I have seen cost a LOT of money, so is it possible to thickness sand by hand or using a portable belt sander? Or do you just plane it to the right thickness then finish by sanding?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Plane close to thickness and finish with a card scraper and scraper plane.

you will get a much a better finish on the wood than with sanding.

even when i thickness sand i still only sand close to thickness and take it to the final thicknes with a scraper plane,

Joel.

There's also the Wagner Saf-T-Planer for use in a drill press, as long as the drill press has a large enough swing.

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Planes/Wagner_Safe-T-Planer.html

http://www.patfosterguitars.com/harvest2/pages/page_3.html

Less of a learning curve than a hand plane and scraper, but not as much fun.

Pat

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

The problem with hand sanding is in maintaining a consist thickness. Hand sanding even with a RO will leave you with spots that are lower and spots that are higher. Hand planning, a Wagner Safety Planer or even a shop made disc sander will be many times more consistent than hand sanding.

I have ran in to the problem that Michael has mentioned, especially in Cedar, where the wood is so much softer than the rosette and binding edges.
Now after the top is on and guitar is bound and scraped flush, I do my final sanding with a 4X8 oak sanding block. This was a tip I got from Mark Blanchard.
This really helps make the top nice and dip free!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Many of us have made drum sanders for this. My unit, which was built largely of 2"x4"s, plywood and particle board is accurate to 0.1 mm on a good day. It is hand fed and needs tweaking from time to time to maintain the accuracy, so you need a steady hand, but the thing works. And you can’t beat the price! I hand plane backs and sides close to final thickness and then go to the sander. Easy woods I plane the closest (sometimes all the way), figured or otherwise difficult to plane woods start out thicker as a tear out when you get close to done can ruin a piece. Tops I usually just hand plane as I like to taper their thickness and that is easy to do with the plane, besides softwoods are such a joy to plane.



A shop made disc sander? How would one look, and how would you use it for this?

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

This one is not homemade, but purchased from Specialty Tuners web site (think Gilbert Tuners). It works very well for thicknessing small stuff, or will also even out sides, backs or tops, depending on your DP size. Mine is only a 14", but that gives me about a 18" reach overall with the 5" disk, if you remove the fence for the last passes. Here, I'm doing little stuff for a rosette tile.

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Waddy

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Since you mentioned Timesavers in your message, you may not know that there are lots of relatively inexpensive thickness sanders that cost far less than a Timesaver, which is a large industrial machine. You should investigate the Performax, Delta, Grizzly and other companies - they all make sanders for a fraction of the cost of a Timesaver that will do an adequate (but slower) job for you.

Brook

I've been doing this for years from doing autobody work! Really works well, even on large contours. The important thing is to work the radius on a bias to centerline in a cross hatch fashion.

I wanted to say also one of the most sensitive tools available to find dips or other uneveness is one's own hands. It's amazing what one can feel just by running your hand over a surface. Things you can't even see easily, pop right out to the hand.

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Before i got my delta drum sander,i used a marble threshold with 4" self stick sandpaper rolls .And it got everything perfectly flat.I still us them for laminating solid bodies.It sort of works like a granite plate,except you hold this plate in your hand to sand flat.You can buy these thresholds at lowes for around 8 bucks.They are the marble like plates that are installed across the doorway on the floor into a bathroom .They are perfectly flat,and make a great sanding fixture.