When the wood gets very thin, as with laminations, the planer blades tend to pick up the wood. particularly at the butt end, and splinter it. Maybe the wood bows a little going through and gets caught that way. It can be done, but will likely ruin some wood in the process.
I never tried it, but I always thought it should be possible to remove the planer blades and use a stick on sand paper on the drum. Voila, a drum sander. Just what you need for making laminations.
It’s Very difficult to make thin laminations with a planer as they tend to get tore up. I also don’t think the idea of removing the blades and putting adhesive backed sandpaper on the drum would work either. Usually the infeed and outfeed rollers on a planer are about 1/8” off from the drum to account for the blades sticking up from the drum. It probably would be difficult to lower the drum enough to get the sandpaper to even touch the wood. Even if you could, the large grooves the blades go in would create a sharp edge under the sandpaper. I’m thinking the paper would get tore up pretty quick. Try it though! If you can make it work you will have come up with a break through for many aspiring bow makers. IMO- a thickness sander is the best tool for making laminations. Granted they are not inexpensive machines to buy. So, if you only plan to make a few bows it’s much cheaper to just order laminations already at the thickness you want. If you decide you really love making lots of laminated bows, you will probably end up buying a thickness sander in the end anyway.
Tucker, the adjustment can be handled by using a thicker lamination bed so the drum doesn't have to be lowered as much. Certainly possible that the grooves where the blades used to be would cause the paper to wear more quickly. Worth a try though, I think.
Check all Craigslist ads within driving distance. I bought my Delta thickness sander new and it was worth every penny, love that thing... but I found the exact same model on Craigslist for half the cost. A buddy of mine ended up buying it, then he was a happy lam grinder too.
Orion- using a sled for the lamination to ride on doesn’t solve the problem with a planer drum wrapped with sandpaper because the rollers that feed the wood into the planer still ride on the lamination and are set at a height about 1/8” lower than the drum that holds the blades, at least that’s how my planer works. Said another way, when the blades are installed the edges of the blades are very close to the same height as the surface of the rollers. When the blades are removed the surface of the drum is nearly 1/8” higher than the surface of the rollers. The drum with the sandpaper would be spinning in mid air while the lamination passes below it untouched. I just replaced the rollers in my planer and found that on mine there is some up and down adjustment that can be made to the rollers relative to the drum. If there is enough adjustment travel on the springs that hold the rollers down then maybe this idea would work. On the thickness sanders that I’m familiar with there is a conveyor belt that the wood rides on. When the laminations get around 1/8” thick or less they need to ride on a sled to avoid tearing up the conveyor belt. When making tapered laminations they ride on a tapered sled to begin with. If you have a planer that uses a conveyor belt to feed wood into it then the idea to remove blades and adhere sandpaper might work better than with a planer that uses powered rollers (like mine).
Note: RC’s video above is of a Grizzly GO459 12” thickness sander in operation (if I recognize it properly). It is not a planer. I own one of these and it does an amazing job of grinding laminations. I also own a Performax 16-32 which works ok as well. My planer does not work well for making laminations any thinner than about 1/8”.
I have a planer that I'd happily trade for a sander. But, at 800+ # the shipping will be painful.
Really, if it's only about making lams it's worth calculating the break point between investment and return. I did it and am happy to pay for professional grinding!
Not only are thickness sanders useful in making lams for glass/wood composites, they do a great job on wooden backing strips like hickory or maple(I've made them less than 1/16" thick), or solid cores for basic backed bows or thinning and tapering board bows, or laminations for trilams and such... parallel and varying degrees of taper, risers, accent strips, overlays, you name it.
