Hi,
I've been following the guide to making a river table, and got to the point where I needed to flatten the top (post resin pour).

After a while I found a place that would put my piece through their planer (other places had said they wouldn't do it if it wasn't their wood), and upon closer inspection the surface of the wood and resin has been left rather pitted in numerous patches:



Using a low grit on my orbital sander in an attempt to sand out has hardly touched it, and I'm left wondering what caused the pitting (maybe blunt blades of the planer?) and how to go about taking 1-2mm off the entire surface to get to a smooth-ish level state (ready for sanding through the grits).

What would people suggest? 

Is a router and jig the best way forward (as shown in the video tutorial)? I'm not keen on trying the planer again if I'm going to be left with similar results, and I don't think an electric handheld planer would rival the route and jig set up for a uniform finish? Happy to be corrected though!

Thanks for any ideas on what caused the poor finish, and options to go about correcting it. 

Sam.

Looks like blunt planer blades for sure. Pretty poor effort if that was professionally done.

I don't see the problem with using an electric handheld planer here though, given the surface is already flat. It will leave some small planer lines, but so will the router - you just sand these out after. The only reason you would use a router is if you had bumps or patches of resin as you would after your pour, as the planer doesn't deal with unevenness so well. Your table is already nice and flat, so you can just use a planer to quickly take out however much material you need to get rid of the pitting. Just make sure you keep the blades sharp!

Sounds like a blunt tool, too speedy past and/or taking too much material off in one pass hence it's torn chunks out of it.

You can either plane off the top again or just do it with a sander  - but it will take a while.


Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

Thanks Hanaldo and Warren for your replies. 
Good to hear the electric handheld planer is an option - I've never used one but expect it to be a much quicker process than creating a rig and using a router to remove the same amount of material.
I'll have a look to see what models the local tool hire places offer, and will remember to enquire about the sharpness of the blades!