I've wanted a thickness sander for quite awhile. I have a thickness planer, but once you work the wood to less than 1/4" (6mm) it gets scary! Sometimes, depending upon the wood, you can go thinner. I have gone down to less than 2mm, but that was lucky, and it was a low risk situation.

The planer uses blades set while a sander uses abrasive paper wrapped around a cylinder. The blades can really rip apart thin pieces of wood, and if your wood if valuable, then you risk ruining all of it.

I'd been collecting some of the parts for awhile, then I found this old Delta Super 900 radial arm saw at the dump (my second saw find there). With nothing to lose, I brought it back to the shop. It is solid, and already has a great height adjustment mechanism. A bonus is that I can make an open end sander for when I need to run wide stock through.

Primarily, it will be used for guitar parts, so it is wide enough for that.

I'm at the point of making the discs to attach the steel cylinder to the shaft. I don't get a lot of time to work on it, just a bit at a time.