"A really handy tool for those of you who want to use solid wood but lack a
thickness planer is the 'Wagner Safe-T Planer', available at the Woodworkers
Warehouse around here (Boston). It is a sort of end mill, about 2 1/2" in
diameter, with three cutters, that goes in your drill press. To use it you
set the drill to it's highest speed, and position the planer above the table
to give the thickness you want. Turn the drill on and push the wood in from
the side. It will take about 1/16" per pass. There is a smooth lip all around
that overlaps the cutters enough that it is hard to cut yourself without
trying, and because of the three cutters it has only a minimal tendency to
grab. It does take a bit of getting used to, but I have been using mine for
over twenty years and would not be without it. The surface you get will be
fairly smooth; a light pass with a hand plane is enough to clean it up, and
it will be very accurately thicknessed. Best $35 you will ever spend. ACCEPT
NO SUBSTITUTES!"
I will add that they also make one that goes on a radial arm saw. Either one
can be used to thickness wood from as big as your drill press or saw can
handle down to .5mm safely, accurately, and reasonably quickly.
Personally, I HATE sanders; I have only ever run into one kind of wood (Osage
Orange) that I felt I could not thickness efficiently without a sander, and
eventually I got the hang of that without the sander, too. Sanders leave grit
in the wood surface that dulls hand tools, and gets in the way of gluing.
Besides, they make fine dust, which makes the shop look shabby, gets into the
finish, is a known carcinogen, and also can BREED IN CORNERS!!! Once you get
a sander up and running you will NEVER be free of dust until you move to a
new shop, which is what I'm doing ( my current partner loves his sander!). By
comparison, the chips that you get from a drill press planer are fairly
heavy; more comparable to the heavier dust from the bandsaw or router, so
that they stay pretty well localized for cleanup and don't multiply when you
aren't looking. I can make an entire guitar or harp with only two or three
pieces of sandpaper for final finish, and half of that is used wet, so there
is very little dust. So, try the Safe-T Planer, it's a lot cheaper than a
sander, and far superior in my opinion.