I have an old Powermatic PM160 16" planer with a Shelix head.

I use it in conjunction with a carrier board to thickness backs, sides, and tops.

It's about 10X faster than the sander but there are some dangers. If the piece isn't securely attached to the carrier board or if the double stick lets go for some reason, it will eat the piece of wood. I have experienced tear out on highly figured Koa .

Kevin Looker

Mark,

I would consider a dust extractor essential with a drum sander otherwise you risk running through a significant amount of abrasive due to clogging/burning. If its a small shop, nearly essential with a planer of any type. The Grizzly Canister dust extractors in the 1-2hp range are solid options, and can be found used at reasonable prices if you keep you eye out.

The best low-dust option (and can be more budget friendly) would be to use a hand plane and/or scrapers for thicknessing tops/backs/sides. It can actually be faster than a drum sander on some woods, gives you a chance to get to know the grain (runout, curl, stiffness, etc)

A good cabinet scraper, a #4 or low angle jack plane, sharpening stones/film of your choice, and a jig for sharpening makes for a great thicknessing setup.

Drum sanders are wonderful tools, but I would suggest you want to invest in the full setup. A a planer is not liekly to give you the control you want for thicknessing delicate tops/backs/sides.

I have a love hate relationship with it. It gets the job done very well though slowly and tediously.

I recently put the Cutech planer (link below) in to service in my shop and could not be happier with its function to date. I haven't tried to plane highly figured woods yet so can't speak to its performance with same but I have been able to plane sides to final thickness with a carrier board as shown in the video below. The problem with backs is that an affordable 13" (or 12" as you mention) planer can't accommodate the joined plates and see Bryan's comment above about trying to join them after thicknessing - nightmare..

Of course if you can afford a 16" or larger planer then by all means but they are not cheap.

I just got a SuperMax 19/38 thickness sander and use to get to final thickness it after planing wood to its minimum of .125" 1/8" in the planer. The planer gets "exactly" to .125" every time and am please with the performance. The 19/38 is hooked up to a shop vac and it handles the dust pretty well.

REALLY empathize with your decision.

Have you considered building a thickness sander? I had one for many years. Very inexpensive to build and with a cheap shop vac you're covered for dust.

I have a bench top DeWalt planer and can get wood as close to thickness as I need with it. The cutter head is of a small diameter and the rollers are pretty close together so it has less of a tendency to suck the wood into the cutter head and blow it out the dust chute as some of the larger planers do. With careful glue ups you might be able to align the plates well enough to finish sand them flush with a R.O. or large pad sander (or the plane taking .002" shavings).
I wouldn't bother with the shellex head on such a small planer. For the cost of it you might find a used drum sander. With sharp blades and straight grained woods the planer should work O.K. with regular knives.

Thanks for the input! I have attempted to use hand planes and a scraper to get the stock down but I found the process of thicknessing (especially the sides/backs) to be time consuming and cumbersome. Some of this may be traced back to human error on my part, but I could not seem to get certain woods to plane well. Low angle plane with an extremely tight mouth, super sharp iron, etc. It was still maddening. When I was finally able to avoid tear out it was taking a shaving of .002" or so, which makes removing any significant amount a *long* ordeal. :-/