I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hard maple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you can replace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is to remove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tung oil/poly mixture several layers deep.
I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. There are several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get. My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Does anyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to the veritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?
How do you decide on the blade depth of cut? I'm worried about taking too much off in one pass and unflattening the board I'm trying to finish.
As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I was planning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that had several scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.
Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander when the big compressor gets here.
thanks.
brian