I've gotten more into doing veneer work lately. I saw my own on the bandsaw using a 3/4" carbide tooth blade. It works very well at slicing thin sheets from fairly wide stock, leaving a relatively smooth cut. However, it's not finish quality like you might expect from the store-bought, knife-sliced veneer. The bandsaw leaves saw marks to remove as you can see in the panel, below.
Without thinking much about it I pulled out my RO sander, put on an 80-grit pad and went to work. Besides the time it takes, one problem with this approach is the hide glue applied to the surface gums up the sandpaper, making it less effective. No problem. I pulled out a card scraper and began to remove the glue before sanding. That gets most of the glue and you can even take out the saw marks if you stay at it long enough. However, It's still a lot of work and tiring for the hands and thumbs.
About this time I remembered, I have a Stanley 112 scraper plane. Why am I doing this the hard way? To be honest, it's not a tool I often use and forget I have it. Fortunately, it was adjusted, sharp and eager to be used. A few passes made easy work of removing all the glue and almost all of the saw marks. I could have gotten all of these, but I knew I was going to sand it anyway, so stopped just short. Now, a few passes with 80-grit on the ROS removed the remaining marks and then, switching to 180-grit, I finished the task in no time.
Moral of the story is to remember the tools you have and choose the right tool for the task. Very often the old tools are still the fastest.
Without thinking much about it I pulled out my RO sander, put on an 80-grit pad and went to work. Besides the time it takes, one problem with this approach is the hide glue applied to the surface gums up the sandpaper, making it less effective. No problem. I pulled out a card scraper and began to remove the glue before sanding. That gets most of the glue and you can even take out the saw marks if you stay at it long enough. However, It's still a lot of work and tiring for the hands and thumbs.
About this time I remembered, I have a Stanley 112 scraper plane. Why am I doing this the hard way? To be honest, it's not a tool I often use and forget I have it. Fortunately, it was adjusted, sharp and eager to be used. A few passes made easy work of removing all the glue and almost all of the saw marks. I could have gotten all of these, but I knew I was going to sand it anyway, so stopped just short. Now, a few passes with 80-grit on the ROS removed the remaining marks and then, switching to 180-grit, I finished the task in no time.
Moral of the story is to remember the tools you have and choose the right tool for the task. Very often the old tools are still the fastest.