: Are there any favorite belt sander models among you guys? Or ones to stay
: away from? I need to flatten some rough cut and slightly bowed Sapele
: which has tightly spaced alternating bands of grain, so planing is out of
: the question. Kinda slow too. Seems like a belt sander would get me in the
: ballpark before I switch of a ROS or manual methods.

: Ted

Hey Ted-

I know what you mean about Sapele. The grain reversals are kind of a pain, but it is pretty for the same reason.

I have never bought Sapele rough, only S3S, and in my experience it planed pretty well in my thickness planer even with only moderately sharp knives. I usually get some scattered tearout, but not a great amount if I take little bites. It's murder trying to hand plane it with my jointer plane, though, even with a high-angle blade. I think if you try and belt-sand rough lumber with a cup, you'll end up with a piece of lumber you won't be able to use in the end. It will be wavy and out of square, and in such a way that even a pass through a thickness planer or wide-belt sander probably wouldn't clean it up. I hate to sound like a cabinet-maker here, but your only choice is probably to find a way to face joint it to remove the cup, then once you have a flat face you can thickness plane the opposite face to get that face parallel and ready to work. Maybe someone else will have a different solution, but it would probably be cheaper to pay your hardwood dealer (or someone else) to do it for you than to end up spending a lot of time with a belt sander and end up with something you can't use and need to replace.

Now- I am not a fan of belt sanders. Planes are quieter, lighter, more precise, and less messy. But, there are times when a belt sander is the right tool for the job. In my situation- because I'm not a heavy user- I really like the small sander that Porter Cable came out with last year. It's relatively light, has pretty good dust collection when hooked up to my shop vac, and gets into tight spaces easily. For a long time I used an ultra-cheap skil, and it survived and I still use it for shaping metal. Has a flat top with rests on it so you can flip it and clamp it to your bench to use it with the belt-up as a stationary sander. The Porter Cable has that curvy mouse shape, so you cant do that trick with it. Probably not what you want for your project...

good luck!