Reply by Sirgreggins

when listening to woodtalk online, a guy doesn’t sand. he uses just a smoothing plane and he talks about the depth that you get is unmatched. sanding crushed the fibers and thus makes it look less nice. in this vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIxez7pU1A4) he uses a smoothing plane and uses the shavings to burnish the wood. The look that you get with this method is far superior to sanding. The only i sand instead is my guitars since a plane wouldn’t work on a curved surface