This week’s featured tool, the wood planer, is one of the first tools used in creating a lap steel, by flattening the wood along with cutting it to the proper thickness to spec. As a small piece of trivia, the first few ShannonSteel™ lap steels were made without access to a planer and were sized with a hand sander. Twaz not fun.
This bench-top wood planer featured here is a portable planer sold by most hardware stores and is an essential piece to any luthier, or wood worker’s arsenal. As prices increase, so does the quality of the cuts. A spiral head planer has more blades for cleaner cuts, and can get pricey, but will leave the wood with a cleaner cut and lead to less work in the later processes.
Shannon Guitars 