Thickness planing with a Saf-T-Planer

[Mark Pollock]

Pretty much what I wrote in the subject - I am starting to build my first uke (aw, how cute!) and need to plane everything to the correct thickness.I know that I bench planer is not safe to use for this, nor do I have one anyways. I also lack a thickness sander or reasonable approximation of one. I do have a drill press, and I think the Wagner Saf-T-Planer would work fine for this, but I wanted to get any other useful opinions you good folks here would have about this.

 

Mark Pollock

[Mark Pollock]

You have to make sure that the table is slightly tilted towards where you want to cut - so slightly higher on the left and front sides, and slightly lower on the trailing edges. We're talking less than a degree of tilt here - just enough to keep things safe. You also need to only feed into the front left corner - you let that part do the work, feeding from left to right. The extra instructions at Stew-Mac are rather helpful, http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Planes/Wagner_Safe-T-Planer.html?...

and there are also some good videos on You Tube.